Touch-panel controller chip manufacturer Elan Microelectronics Corp (義隆電子) yesterday said its consolidated revenue for last month hit a record high in the company’s history, thanks to increased shipments of touch-screen driver ICs.
Last month’s revenue stood at NT$728.61 million (US$24.36 million), up 4.83 percent from April and up 9.32 percent from the same period of last year, Elan said in an e-mailed statement issued after the stock market closed.
Last month’s sales breakdown showed that 65 percent of revenue came from touch controller-related products — 33 percent from touchscreen ICs and 32 percent from touchpad modules — that are used in smartphones, tablets running Android and Windows 8 operating systems, and Windows 8-powered notebooks and Ultrabooks, Elan said.
With more notebooks receiving Windows 8 certification, Elan said its first-quarter touchscreen IC shipments grew 50 percent from the previous quarter.
“Shipment growth is expected to accelerate this quarter as more models are incorporated into the mass-production phase,” Dennis Liu (劉代銘), a spokesman for Hsinchu-based Elan, said in the statement.
Liu said the company has also seen growing interest from international customers about Windows 8 applications for tablet PCs and Ultrabooks.
“At present, Elan is actively processing a number of commissioned tests and is quite confident that more products will receive Windows 8 certification,” he said.
Elan did not provide sales guidance for this quarter, but said it expects “revenue and profit growth for the second half of this year,” thanks to an increasing number of orders for Android tablets, smartphones, whitebox tablets and all-in-one PCs.
The company has more Windows 8 certificates than its peers and it is working with up to 15 touch sensor makers for both glass and film-based capacitive touch solutions, according to Credit Suisse’s Taipei branch.
“Elan seems to maintain a leading position for notebook touch given it has strong intellectual properties with early mover advantage,” Credit Suisse analyst Jerry Su (蘇厚合) said in a note yesterday, adding that the company stands to be a key beneficiary of the proliferation of touchscreens in the PC industry.
Su said the company has also recently secured four new top-tier tablet customers for Android devices, on top of last year’s addition of Google Inc and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩).
In the meantime, the company is also making moves into the market for touch controller ICs in the Chinese whitebox smartphone market, he said.
In the first five months of the year, Elan’s consolidated revenue grew 18.92 percent to NT$3.29 billion compared with a year earlier.
Shares of Elan rose 1.42 percent to NT$78.5. The firm’s shares have risen 67.91 percent so far this year, compared with the broader market's 6.27 percent increase.
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