Taipei-based Inventec Corp (英業達) expects increased demand for its PCs, servers, smart devices and solar power products this quarter after the contract electronics manufacturer weathered the slow season during the first three months of the year.
The company yesterday forecast a 5 percent quarter-on-quarter growth in shipments across its four main product categories this quarter, it told a teleconference.
Inventec president Maurice Wu (巫永財) said that smartphone shipments this quarter would be boosted after a number of Chinese brands had tapped the company as a supplier since the beginning of the year.
AUTOMATION
To address the high labor costs at its Shanghai-based operations, the company has also initiated organizational restructuring efforts, and plans to deploy smart manufacturing and automation upgrades to further improve efficiency, Wu said.
Although the first quarter saw an across-the-board sequential decline, the company reported that net income during the period rose 87 percent to NT$1.27 billion (US$42.55 million) when compared with a year earlier.
Earnings per share were NT$0.35.
Sales in the first three months fell 21 percent quarter-on-quarter, but gained 5 percent year-on-year to NT$104.8 billion, company data showed.
MARGIN
Gross margin during the period came in at 5.1 percent, up 0.1 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, but down 0.5 percentage points year-on-year.
Operating margin fell by 0.4 percentage points quarter-on-quarter and 0.2 percentage points year-on-year to 1.4 percent, it said.
As the New Taiwan dollar appreciated at a slower pace compared with the same period last year, the company posted non-operating income of NT$297 million, which included NT$88 million in foreign-exchange gains on top of its investment gains.
That compared with non-operating losses of NT$1.7 billion the previous quarter and NT$993 million the previous year, it said.
FEWER SMART DEVICES
In the first quarter, sales contribution from PCs and servers rose 5 percent quarter-on-quarter to 82 percent of total sales, while sales of smart devices weakened by 4 percentage points to 16 percent.
Solar power products shed 1 percentage point to 2 percent during the slow season, it said.
Inventec shares yesterday rose 0.43 percent to close at NT$23.15 in Taipei trading, outperforming the TAIEX, which fell 0.71 percent.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure
RSS