Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s biggest notebook computer maker, yesterday posted 55 percent annual growth in net profit for last year as it gained larger orders from Apple Inc for its iPad and Apple Watch series.
Net profits soared to NT$8.91 billion (US$289.23 million), compared with NT$5.75 billion in 2017, the firm’s financial statement showed.
That translated into earnings per share of NT$2.05, up from NT$1.31 the previous year.
Revenue rose 9 percent annually to NT$967.71 billion from NT$887.66 billion, with PCs constituting more than 60 percent of the total, the company said.
To cope with increasing orders, Compal said it plans to build a new fab in Chongqing later this year, after starting operations at a factory in the Chinese city last year.
Factory utilization at the Chongqing fab is “quite good,” Compal president Martin Wong (翁宗斌) told an earnings conference in Taipei.
Asked whether it was boosting capacity at the Chongqing fab in preparation for upcoming launches of new iPad and Apple Watch products, as it won a bigger portion of orders from Apple, Wong said that China would remain a major manufacturing base for the firm, but Compal is seeking alternative production sites to circumvent US tariffs on Chinese goods.
Compal plans to spend NT$5.5 billion on capacity expansions in Vietnam, Chongqing and Taoyuan’s Pingjhen District (平鎮) this year, it said.
The company said it expects shipments of non-PC products to grow by a double-digit percentage next quarter, after dipping by a quarterly rate of 30 to 40 percent in the current quarter, matching its pattern in slack seasons.
PC shipments are expected to grow by a mid-single-digit percentage next quarter after falling 10 to 15 percent this quarter, Compal said.
The company shipped 10.2 million laptops in the fourth quarter last year, it said.
“We expect that the impact of an Intel Corp CPU [central processing unit] drought will be smaller than [our peers], as we are shipping more gaming, ultra-slim and commercial” notebook computers, Wong said. “Intel prioritizes those high-end models in supplying CPUs.”
Compal expects supply constraints of Intel CPUs to ease in the third quarter, Wong said, adding that Compal still aims to grow its overall PC shipments and revenue this year.
The laptop supplier for Dell Inc and HP Inc last year shipped about 40 million units.
Compal also said that it has made progress in breaking into the server market, as it has received orders from several clients, which would help it more than double its revenue from new products that include servers, automotive components and Internet of Things devices.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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
RSS