AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) has suspended production at a plant, which makes polysilicon used in solar wafer manufacturing, in Japan and is assessing potential quake damage to supply chains in the LCD panel industry, the company said.
The Hsinchu-based company said in a statement on Saturday that its manufacturing facilities had not been damaged and there had been no casualties at its Japanese solar-wafer unit, M.Setek Co, in Fukushima Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the magnitude 8.9 earthquake on Friday.
M.Setek produces polysilicon and solar wafers in Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture, both of which are key raw materials for making solar cells. AUO has in recent years expanded into the solar power business, aiming to gain a foothold in the fast-growing green energy market.
AUO has about 800 employees in Japan, with about 700 working at M.Setek, chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) said yesterday on the sidelines of a job fair in Taipei.
“The [M.Setek] plant was not hit by the tsunami, but ... because of a lack of water and electricity, it is not operational at the moment,” local cable TV network UBN quoted Lee as saying yesterday.
The company downplayed the potential financial impact from the production suspension, adding that M.Setek contributed just 0.3 percent of AUO’s NT$102.62 billion consolidated revenue in the fourth quarter of last year.
As for the possible knock-on effect on the LCD panel industry, Lee said there would certainly be an impact in terms of the upstream supply chain, but that an accurate assessment would require more time.
“We have alternative sources of chemical materials,” Lee said, hinting that the earthquake has had a limited impact on the company’s flat-panel business.
US market researcher IHS iSuppli said on Friday that the earthquake would affect the production of components for LCD panels — including glass, color filters, polarizers, cold cathode fluorescent lamps and light-emitting diodes — as Japanese suppliers play an important role in this line of business.
Meanwhile, Lee said yesterday the company would re-apply to the Investment Commission for permission to change its Chinese investment plan, after the government announced on March 8 that it would allow Taiwanese LCD makers to buy a stake in or merge with Chinese counterparts, as well as invest in Chinese fabs using the same level of technology they currently employ in Taiwan.
In December, the company won government approval to invest US$3 billion in a 7.5-generation fab in Kunshan, China.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHEN MEI-YING
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR: Revenue from AI servers made up more than 50 percent of Wistron’s total server revenue in the second quarter, the company said Wistron Corp (緯創) on Tuesday reported a 135.6 percent year-on-year surge in revenue for last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, with the momentum expected to extend into the third quarter. Revenue last month reached NT$209.18 billion (US$7.2 billion), a record high for June, bringing second-quarter revenue to NT$551.29 billion, a 129.47 percent annual increase, the company said. Revenue in the first half of the year totaled NT$897.77 billion, up 87.36 percent from a year earlier and also a record high for the period, it said. The company remains cautiously optimistic about AI server shipments in the third quarter,
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a
RSS