Shares of E Ink Holdings Co (元太科技) yesterday rallied to an almost four-year high on speculation that Apple Inc might introduce a dual screen in its next iPhone model using E Ink’s energy-efficient e-paper displays.
The stock price of E Ink surged 3.62 percent to NT$24.35 yesterday, retreating from an early gain of 5.53 percent. The closing price was the highest since Nov. 2, 2012. Turnover was the largest in a month at 34.74 million shares.
The stock outperformed the TPEX, which fell 0.5 percent yesterday.
E Ink supplies e-paper displays primarily to e-reader vendors such as Sony Corp and Amazon.com.
The rally in E Ink’s stock price was prompted by a report by the Economic Daily News that Apple has requested E Ink to send products for sampling and certification after Yota Devices’ dual-screen YotaPhone 2 impressed the US consumer electronics giant.
“We are aggressively exploring business opportunities to use our e-paper displays as secondary screens on mobile phones,” an E Ink public relations official said by telephone yesterday.
The official declined to comment on information on any single customer.
China’s Siswoo earlier this year also unveiled a dual-screen phone, the R9 Darkmoon, equipped with a standard smartphone display and a secondary screen on the back. The secondary screen is a 4.7-inch grayscale e-paper display produced by E Ink, which is energy-saving and can handle texts, e-mails and other functions.
In a separate statement, E Ink said it plans to streamline the operations of a less advanced 2.5-generation LCD factory in Hsinchu, which is a further move to exit the volatile LCD market.
Earlier this year, E Ink shut down its South Korean LCD manufacturing subsidiary Hydis Technologies Co Ltd in an effort to stem losses from LCD panels.
E Ink plans to transform the 2.5-generation production line into a research and development line for developing new e-paper displays, the company said.
About 70 percent, or 190 out of 286 employees working at the plant would be affected by the adjustment, E Ink said.
The company would pay higher severance fees for those employees affected than stipulated by the Labor Standards Act (勞基法) and it will also help them find new jobs.
E Ink generates about 70 percent of its revenue from selling e-paper displays used in e-books, which delivers a higher gross margin than LCD panels, the company said.
E-paper displays for luggage tags, supermarket goods shelves, wearable devices, phones and LCD panels make up the remaining 30 percent, the company said.
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
INDUSTRY LEADER: INDUSTRY LEADER: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS