E-Lead Electronic Co (怡利電子), an auto electronics manufacturer focusing on infotainment head units, plans to invest US$3 million to build an assembly plant in Indonesia in the second half of the year to supply Japanese automakers in the country.
The plant is expected to be operational in the first quarter next year and to generate a revenue of between NT$700 million (US$23.09 million) and NT$800 million a year, E-Lead officials said.
“We plan to build a factory in Karawang, Indonesia, where there is a cluster of Japanese carmakers,” E-Lead chairman Tonny Chen (陳錫蒼) said on Saturday in Greater Taichung.
Chen said the company also chose to build a plant in Karawang, a town east of Jakarta, because the Indonesian government is considering offering tax incentives.
Infotainment head units, such as audio-video navigation systems, rear-seat entertainment systems and head-up display systems, account for about 90 percent of E-Lead’s revenue. The firm’s major competitors are Panasonic Corp, Continental Corp, Alphine Electronics Inc and Harman International Industries Inc.
E-Lead started supplying car computers to Toyota Motor Corp’s Altis sedans and Yaris compact cars in Indonesia, and Nissan Motor Co’s Juke sport utility vehicles in Thailand last month, and to Hyundai Taiwan’s iX45 sedans this quarter, which helped boost its revenue by 72.1 percent year-on-year to NT$298.05 million last month, the company said.
The figure was 10.32 percent lower than the NT$332.36 million it posted in January.
The company expects orders for its reversing monitors from Toyota’s divisions in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia to increase by NT$20 million to NT$30 million a month starting from the third quarter.
Shipments of car computers to Saudi Arabia are likely to increase to 140,000 units a year from the third quarter after Toyota and its local partner, Abdul Latif Jameel Group, launch new cars, the company said.
As for the aftermarket, E-Lead plans to launch a new head-up display system that integrates information on a smartphone and navigating system and projects the information onto the windshield at the Computex trade show in Taipei this year.
With the new product, E-Lead expects sales of its display systems, reversing monitors and tire pressure monitoring systems to account for 20 percent of its revenue next year, up from 10 percent this year.
Thanks to rising orders from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Taiwan, sales this year are forecast to expand 20 percent from NT$3.29 billion last year, while profit is expected to increase 50 percent from last year, the company said.
E-Lead reported earnings per share of NT$3 last year, compared with NT$1.66 in 2012.
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