Shares of touch panel supplier TPK Holding Co (宸鴻) came under heavy pressure on Saturday as many investors feared that the company’s bottom line will suffer from escalating price competition, dealers said.
Such downbeat sentiment was highlighted by a recommended downgrade by Barclays Capital to “underweight” from “equalweight” in the brokerage’s latest research note.
Shares of TPK fell 7 percent, the maximum daily decline, to close at NT$284 with 11.22 million shares changing hands, while the weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) ended down 0.31 percent at 8,142.48 points.
“Rumors that TPK would report a net loss for August emerged yesterday, and the negative lead continued to weigh on the stock today,” MasterLink Securities (元富證券) analyst Tom Tang (湯忠謙) said.
Tang said TPK has lost orders from Apple Inc to ship touch panels for iPhone production.
“So, the Taiwanese company has been cutting product prices to secure orders from other customers in the touch notebook computer and tablet computer business to make up the loss caused by Apple,” Tang said. “Even worse, new competitors ... have imposed more challenges.”
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