Yageo Corp (國巨), the world’s biggest supplier of chip resistors, saw its shares fall by 8.61 percent yesterday, despite posting another record-breaking quarterly net profit as it hiked its prices due to supply constraints.
In the quarter that ended on March 31, Yageo made NT$4.26 billion (US$144 million), which was more than the company’s share capital of NT$3.51 billion. That represented a 4.3 times increase from NT$818.4 million in the first quarter of last year.
On a quarterly basis, net profit jumped 40 percent from NT$3.02 billion.
Earnings per share surged to NT$12.15 last quarter, compared with NT$1.62 a year earlier and NT$8.62 the previous quarter.
Gross margin climbed to a record high of 51.4 percent last quarter, mainly driven by rising contributions from high-end products for cars and industrial devices.
A persistent tight supply of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) and chip resistors also helped, Yageo said in a company statement on Tuesday.
The firm’s figures for last quarter beat some analysts’ expectations.
First Capital Management Inc (第一金投顧) yesterday said that Yageo’s gross margin beat its estimate of 46 percent and its earnings per share were also higher than the NT$10.13 it anticipated.
“The significant increase in last quarter’s net profit is primarily attributable to the newly unveiled pricing scheme for MLCC,” First Capital said in a research note.
MLCC accounted for 60 percent of Yageo’s revenue totaling NT$11.02 billion in the first quarter of this year, delivering a gross margin of about 60 percent, the investment consultancy said.
First Capital raised its revenue forecast for Yageo to NT$51.8 billion from NT$47.9 billion, in anticipation that the supply crunch would worsen after Japan’s Kyocera Corp announced its decision to stop supplying standard-type MLCC, it said.
This would prompt Yageo to start a new round of price hikes later this year, it added.
Yageo shares dropped to NT$584 yesterday in Taipei trading, but they have rallied about 65 percent since Jan. 2, when the stock closed at NT$354.
The firm is expected to boost capacity by between 25 and 30 percent this year to cope with robust demand, Taishin Securities Investment Advisory Co (台新投顧) said.
“The capacity expansion should help increase Yageo’s revenue this year,” Taishin Securities Investment Advisory said in a research note yesterday. “We expect supply of passive components to be tight during the second half of this year based on information from the supply chain.”
The investment advisory expects Yageo to make NT$49.63 billion in revenue this year, representing year-on-year growth of about 54 percent.
Yageo last month said it spent NT$12 billion in the final quarter of last year to expand its capacity to cope with rising demand.
Given its rosy profit outlook, Taishin Securities Investment Advisory and First Capital raised the target price of Yageo to NT$720 and NT$756, respectively, until December.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS