E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技) yesterday reported that its net profit plunged 82 percent sequentially in the first quarter as heavy foreign-exchange losses undermined its bottom line.
Net profit plummeted to NT$157 million (US$5.22 million) last quarter from NT$891 million in the fourth quarter of last year.
The world’s largest e-paper display supplier booked foreign-exchange losses of NT$394 million last quarter, compared with gains of NT$469 million in the previous quarter.
E Ink lost NT$272 million in the first quarter of last year, mostly due to losses from its South Korean LCD subsidiary.
“An overshoot in the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar in the first quarter had been a drag on the company’s financial performance,” Ricky Tsai (蔡昀叡), a financial director at E Ink, said at an earnings conference.
The company swung into an operating profit of NT$45 million last quarter, from an operating loss of NT$48 million in the previous quarter, Tsai said.
Gross margin edged up to 38.72 percent last quarter from 37 percent in the final quarter of last year, company data showed.
Tsai attributed the improvement to increased shipments of higher-margin products, including e-paper displays for e-readers and electronic shelf labels.
He expects gross margin in the first half to exceed the 35 percent posted in the same period last year.
Revenue should also increase from NT$6.09 billion in the first half of last year, he said.
Revenue contribution from low-margin LCD panels fell to 3 percent last quarter and should drop to a minimal figure this quarter before reaching to zero in the second half, Tsai said.
Royalty income, which rose 5 percent year-on-year to NT$411 million in the first quarter, is expected to grow at a stable pace in the first two quarters on an annual basis, he said.
First-quarter’s increase helped boost the company’s cash position to about NT$8.05 billion at the end of March, up 3.2 percent from NT$7.8 billion a year earlier.
Royalty income will continue to be a cash cow for the company, he said.
To better utilize its cash, E Ink does not rule out investing in strategic partners, or forming joint ventures to help build a better supply chain for its e-paper display business, he said.
Last month, the company formed a joint venture with Sony Solutions Corp to develop new e-paper technologies and to explore new e-paper applications.
E Ink has also formed a strategic partnership with Japan Display Inc to develop high-resolution e-paper displays for smartphones and other devices by leveraging the Japanese firm’s LTPS technology.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
Video streaming giant Netflix is launching a talent cultivation program in Taiwan aimed at producing high-quality Mandarin content, the company announced in a press release on Thursday. Netflix Chinese language content head Maya Huang (黃怡玫) said that Netflix has long invested in the Taiwanese market, citing the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity launched last year as an example. The fund would continue to dedicate resources to discovering content with the potential to be developed into Chinese-language projects, she added. The financing for the new talent projects seeks to create an ecosystem for content creators and professional development programs, she said. The talent projects
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a
RSS