Wistron Corp (緯創) aims to increase its revenue this year from last year’s NT$623.27 billion (US$18.44 billion) through a continued focus on smart devices and investment in the Internet of Things, chairman Simon Lin (林憲銘) said yesterday.
“Last year was challenging for us, but we saw revenue improve and the growth momentum is to continue this year,” Lin told Wistron employees during the firm’s annual weiya (尾牙) banquet at the Nangang Exhibition Hall in Taipei.
Commenting on the firm’s outlook this year, Lin said that while international competition would always exist and the global economy remains unpredictable, the only way to overcome challenges is to make the company stronger.
“The company cannot fully rely on the global economy to grow. We have to raise our competitiveness in coping with global headwinds,” he said.
As part of efforts to increase the company’s competitiveness, Wistron last year carried out corporate restructuring and cut the size of some business units that were not profitable, Lin said.
“We will focus on the businesses with growth potential,” he said.
As the outlook of the PC industry is not promising, the company is to focus on the businesses of smart devices, Internet of Things applications, services and applications, Lin said.
The firm’s management sees great business potential in the area of Internet of Things infrastructure, and the board is to conduct investment assessments and might set up a subsidiary in the first half of this year, Lin said.
However, such investment might not make significant contributions to the company’s bottom line in the near term, as it could take five to 10 years for the Internet of Things industry to mature, he said.
Other than Internet of Things investment, the company this year plans to increase investment in its plant in India to expand its reach in the country, Lin said.
The company on Nov. 24 last year announced it would join India’s Optiemus Infracom Ltd to invest US$200 million in a joint venture in the country, setting up an assembly plant for smart devices in India in the next five years.
While Wistron plans to expand the scale of its investment in India, the firm plans to maintain the size of its operations in China, Lin said.
Wistron, the world’s third-largest contract notebook maker, reported sales grew 5.28 percent annually to NT$623.27 billion last year, compared with NT$591.96 billion made in 2014.
Wistron’s net income totaled NT$1.45 billion, or earnings per share of NT$0.59 per share, in the first three quarters of last year, company data showed.
The results reflected a 51.66 percent decline from NT$3 billion, or earnings per share of NT$1.23, in the same period a year earlier, according to the firm’s filing with the Taipei Stock Exchange.
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