Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s No. 2 contract laptop computer manufacturer, yesterday said it expects tablets and televisions to be its main growth drivers this quarter, while notebooks and smartphones take a back seat.
“We expect tablet shipments to grow quarter-on-quarter for the remainder of the year, aided by clients’ new product launches this and next quarter,” a Compal investor relations official, who declined to be named, told the Taipei Times.
Compal’s tablet clients include Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc.
The official said the company is also optimistic that its TV shipments would increase on a quarterly basis in the second half, with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays boosting demand.
TV sales have also received a boost from its takeover of its Japanese client Toshiba Corp’s North American operations in January and European operations in June.
As for notebooks, which accounted for 73 percent of its total revenue of NT$199.03 billion (US$6.09 billion) last quarter, Compal gave a conservative outlook.
“We expect notebook shipments this quarter to grow by a single-digit percentage from last quarter’s 9.6 million units,” the official said, adding that whether Microsoft Corp’s Windows 10 could spur notebook replacement demand would depend on clients’ shipment requests this and next month.
Compal was also cautious about the outlook for smartphones, citing softer-than-expected demand in emerging markets this year, especially in the Chinese market, the official said.
The company is more optimistic about its smartphone outlook next quarter, when clients are scheduled to launch new handsets in time for the holiday season, she said.
Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) predicted Compal’s revenues would grow by a slower 3.8 percent to NT$206.63 billion this quarter from NT$199.03 billion last quarter.
“We foresee that the soft demand for PCs and smartphones would affect Compal’s sales growth this quarter,” Yuanta analyst Vincent Chen (陳豊丰) said in a note released on Tuesday last week.
Compal last week reported net income of NT$1.5 billion, or NT$0.35 per share, for last quarter, plunging 40.67 percent from a year ago and 25.37 percent from the previous quarter.
The figure missed consensus estimates of NT$2.29 billion.
Gross margin was 3.8 percent, lower than 3.9 percent a year earlier and 4.32 percent a quarter ago, according to the firm’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
In the first seven months of this year, cumulative sales totaled NT$457.29 billion, up 3.45 percent from last year’s NT$442.05 billion.
Compal dropped 2.43 percent to NT$18 in Taipei trading yesterday.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
RSS