Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which this week launched its new Transformer and ZenFone mobile devices in Las Vegas, yesterday said that sales for last quarter rose from the previous quarter and year-on-year.
“The strong performance last quarter was driven by robust demand for Asustek’s smartphones and notebooks,” Asustek chief financial officer David Chang (張偉明) said by telephone.
Consolidated sales were NT$137.75 billion (US$4.3 billion) last quarter, up 5.4 percent from the previous year’s NT$130.69 billion and up 11.16 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$123.91 billion.
However, annual revenue only rose by 0.3 percent to NT$477.21 billion last year from NT$463.28 billion in 2013.
Yuanta Securities and Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) yesterday said Asustek’s fourth-quarter revenue is 9 percent more than the market consensus, mainly driven by contributions from its smartphones and notebooks.
“Asustek launched a smartphone under its second brand Pegasus in the Chinese market last month, which helped boost the firm’s monthly sales,” a Yuanta analyst, who declined to be named, said by telephone.
However, Chang said that foreign-exchange losses due to currency volatility in emerging markets in the past few months might “slightly” affect Asustek’s gross margin and operating margin for last quarter. Last month, the company stopped shipping products to Russia in view of the plunge of the ruble.
“We will recognize exchange losses for the last quarter,” Chang said, adding that it was a one-off situation.
UBS Securities Pte Ltd said it expects Asustek to post weaker-than-expected results this quarter due to seasonal factors.
“As most of the new products will not ramp up shipments until next quarter, we think there could be potential downside trend,” UBS analyst Arthur Hsieh (謝宗文) said in a client note on Tuesday, forecasting that revenue would decline 11 percent from last quarter.
Asustek shares declined 1.44 percent to close at NT$343 in Taipei trading yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX, which fell 0.24 percent.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS