MediaTek Inc (聯發科), which competes with Qualcomm Inc in China’s handset chip market, yesterday posted its weakest monthly revenue in five months for last month, as demand shrank amid customer inventory correction during the slack season.
Revenue fell 22.36 percent to NT$16.77 billion (US$538 million) last month, compared with a record high of NT$21.6 billion in October, according to a company statement. However, last month’s revenue rose 30.82 percent from NT$12.82 billion a year earlier.
Analysts said MediaTek’s sales could continue to fall this month in reflection of fourth-quarter inventory adjustments among its clients. After China’s Oct. 1 to Oct. 7 National Day holidays, demand for high-tech gadgets began showing signs of slowing, analysts said.
MediaTek chief financial officer David Ku (顧大為) yesterday said the downtrend is expected to carry into this month and even next quarter, blaming seasonal factors behind the weakness.
On an annual basis, revenue for next quarter will still be higher than the first quarter of this year at NT$46 billion, Ku said.
“Demand in China looks normal now,” Ku said. “We are seeing seasonal weakness, but we still expect annual growth [in revenue] in the first quarter as demand for 4G [chips] will continue to rise.”
MediaTek holds a 20 percent share of China’s 4G market, lagging behind rival Qualcomm’s 60 to 70 percent, according to MediaTek.
Commenting on the current quarter’s outlook, Ku said “our [previous] view remains unchanged.”
The company last month projected revenue for this quarter would be between NT$54 billion and NT$58.6 billion, indicating a sales guidance from a 6 percent sequential decline to a 2 percent increase from last quarter.
Shipments of 4G smartphone chips are expected to rise to 30 million units this quarter, while overall smartphone chips would be flat from last quarter’s 100 million units, the company said.
Analysts said higher 4G smartphone chip shipments are expected to improve MediaTek’s gross margin and its bottom line in the near future.
In the first 11 months, cumulative revenue surged 59.38 percent to NT$195.99 billion from NT$122.97 billion in the same period of last year, according to MediaTek’s tallies.
Separately, memorychip maker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電) said yesterday that revenue for last month rose 14.71 percent from a year earlier and 0.62 percent from the previous month to NT$3.22 billion.
In the first 11 months, the company’s cumulative revenue rose 14.44 percent to NT$34.85 billion from NT$30.45 billion in the same period of last year, Winbond said in a statement.
Additional reporting by CNA
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS