After posting a double-digit rise in annual profit last quarter, Hiwin Technologies Corp (上銀科技) yesterday said it expects business to be even better this quarter, thanks to increasing demand for industrial robots from China.
“Given that China is facing a severe labor shortage and Hiwin’s industrial robots offer an option for solving the issue, the company expects sales from its automation intelligence segment to rise [sequentially] this quarter and even next year,” Hiwin chairman Eric Chuo (卓永財) told an investors’ conference.
Yuanta Securities Corp (元大證券) analyst Steve Huang (黃柏璁) said in a note on Nov. 6 that he expects Hiwin’s sales to grow 4 percent sequentially this quarter as its multi-axis robots’ sales momentum continues to accelerate.
Hiwin generated NT$355 million (US$11.55 million) in revenue from its industrial robots segment last quarter, accounting for 8 percent of its total revenue of NT$4.24 billion, Chuo said.
The figure could increase to 10 percent this quarter, he added.
Net income rose 18.85 percent to NT$726.71 million, or NT$2.9 per share, last quarter, compared with NT$612.1 million in the same period last year.
The figure was two-and-a-half times higher than its NT$290.19 million in the second quarter.
The company is expanding capacity to meet customer demand and hopes to see progress in the second quarter next year, Chou said, adding that its factories are currently running at full capacity.
Hiwin deputy spokesman Leo Liao (廖克皇) said the company spent NT$1 billion on capital expenditure in the first nine months of this year and plans to spend more than NT$1 billion next year to expand capacity in Taiwan.
Commenting on the impact of the new China-South Korea free-trade agreement, Chuo said it would mostly affect Taiwanese low-end or small machine toolmakers.
The accord would have limited impact on Taiwanese high-end and large machine toolmakers, as these products offer higher value-added and are more competitive, Chuo said, adding that order visibility extends into next quarter.
Chuo added that the weak yen would have a greater impact on Taiwan’s machine tool industry than the China-South Korea free-trade agreement, as a cheaper Japanese currency would undercut orders to Taiwanese firms.
Taiwanese firms’ major rivals in the high-end machine tool industry are Japanese firms, not South Korean, Chuo said.
Taiwanese makers now offer a price differential of between 30 percent and 35 percent vis a vis their Japanese counterparts, but if the yen continues to depreciate against the US dollar, Taiwan would lose that price advantage, he said.
That could happen, with Chuo predicting that the yen would fall further to between ￥120 and ￥125 per US dollar, which would bring the yen’s decline to about 35 percent since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December 2012.
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