Catcher Technology Co (可成) suffered a significant drop in its net profit for the first quarter of this year, mainly due to large foreign exchange losses caused by a stronger New Taiwan dollar.
Catcher said on Friday that the fall in its earnings for the January-March period also came because its major clients were in a transition period before launching new models.
Catcher is a metal casing supplier to Apple Inc and its statement echoed comments made by Apple chief executive Tim Cook last week that a delay in consumer purchases resulted from “reports about future products,” which affected iPhone shipments in the first quarter.
Apple’s iPhone shipments in the first quarter totaled 50.8 million units, lower than the market expectation of 52 million units.
Catcher said it posted NT$2.104 billion (US$69.7 million) in net profit for the quarter, down 77.9 percent from the previous quarter and down 49.5 percent from the same period last year, with earnings per share (EPS) at NT$2.71, compared with an EPS at NT$12.37 in the fourth quarter of last year and NT$5.40 in the first quarter last year.
The company said gross margin fell 1 percentage point from a quarter earlier to 49 percent in the first quarter.
Catcher said its non-operating losses amounted to about NT$2.27 billion, mainly from foreign exchange losses, as the NT dollar rose about 6 percent against the US greenback.
It was just one of many Taiwanese export-oriented high tech firms to report foreign exchange losses.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, lost about NT$6 billion, while Largan Precision Co (大立光), a smartphone camera lens supplier to Apple, lost NT$1.14 billion.
Catcher said that the first half of the year is a traditional slow season for it, but momentum is expected to pick up and it expects to bounce back in the second half of the year.
It left its forecast unchanged.
From January through last month, Catcher’s consolidated sales fell 13.8 percent from a year earlier to NT$19.71 billion.
Catcher has decided to expand a factory in Jiangsu Province, China, by investing US$1 billion to buy production equipment to meet future demand.
Analysts said that the investment aims to secure more orders from Apple, which is expected to launch the next generation iPhones in the second half of the year.
China’s economic planning agency yesterday outlined details of measures aimed at boosting the economy, but refrained from major spending initiatives. The piecemeal nature of the plans announced yesterday appeared to disappoint investors who were hoping for bolder moves, and the Shanghai Composite Index gave up a 10 percent initial gain as markets reopened after a weeklong holiday to end 4.59 percent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dived 9.41 percent. Chinese National Development and Reform Commission Chairman Zheng Shanjie (鄭珊潔) said the government would frontload 100 billion yuan (US$14.2 billion) in spending from the government’s budget for next year in addition
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) suffered its biggest stock decline in more than a month after the company unveiled new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, but did not provide hoped-for information on customers or financial performance. The stock slid 4 percent to US$164.18 on Thursday, the biggest single-day drop since Sept. 3. Shares of the company remain up 11 percent this year. AMD has emerged as the biggest contender to Nvidia Corp in the lucrative market of AI processors. The company’s latest chips would exceed some capabilities of its rival, AMD chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) said at an event hosted by
TECH JUGGERNAUT: TSMC shares have more than doubled since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, as demand for cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips remains high Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday posted a better-than-expected 39 percent rise in quarterly revenue, assuaging concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending is beginning to taper off. The main chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported third-quarter sales of NT$759.69 billion (US$23.6 billion), compared with the average analyst projection of NT$748 billion. For last month alone, TSMC reported revenue jumped 39.6 percent year-on-year to NT$251.87 billion. Taiwan’s largest company is to disclose its full third-quarter earnings on Thursday next week and update its outlook. Hsinchu-based TSMC produces the cutting-edge chips needed to train AI. The company now makes more
NEXT GENERATION: The new 3-nanometer chip has 28 percent more transistors and offers up to 80 percent faster language model performance than its predecessor MediaTek Inc (聯發科) on Wednesday launched a new flagship smartphone chip, Dimensity 9400, made with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) enhanced 3-nanometer technology, aiming to bring more artificial intelligence (AI) applications to edge devices like phones. The Dimensity 9400 is the second smartphone chip using TSMC’s second-generation 3-nanometer technology, after Apple Inc’s A18 Pro chip for the new iPhone 16 series. The new mobile chip has 28 percent more transistors, offers up to 80 percent faster large language model performance and is up to 35 percent more power-efficient than its predecessor, Dimensity 9300, MediaTek said. Chinese smartphone makers Xiaomi Corp (小米),
RSS