Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday said that its net income for its brand business nearly doubled last year on the back of improved business operations, narrowing losses in its mobile phone business, and growing shipments of gaming and ultra-light laptops.
As profit surged 194 percent annually to NT$2.63 billion (US$86.87 million) last quarter, net income last year jumped 187 percent to NT$12.14 billion, Asustek said.
Earnings per share soared from NT$5.7 to NT$16.3 and gross margin rose from 10.6 percent to 13.4 percent, it said.
Although revenue of its brand business last quarter inched up slightly by 1 percent to NT$89.29 billion, full-year revenue declined 6 percent from NT$352.45 billion in 2018 to NT$332.53 billion last year, Asustek said.
Buoyed by the results, Asustek yesterday maintained a confident outlook regarding market demand in the long term, while forecasting a sequential decline in sales this quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
PC sales are expected to fall by up to 40 percent quarter-on-quarter, while components sales would contract by 5 percent, the company said.
“COVID-19 is a big challenge and will impact business in the short term,” Asustek co-CEO S.Y. Hsu (許先越) told investors, adding that the company is facing a decline in demand and difficulties in securing supplies.
“In the mid-term, we expect to see an increase in demand due to the recent rise in distance-leaning and telecommuting,” Hsu said.
“Overall market demand will undoubtedly falter if the virus remains at large … but we [will be able] to rise to such challenges through continuous product innovations and improvements to our operational efficiency,” he said.
“We are [still] seeing positive factors this year, including an end to the shortage of central processing units as well as mining processors … we are also entering a new PC cycle,” Hsu said.
Asustek would continue to focus on developing gaming and ultra-thin laptops, as well as expanding its content creator product line, ProArt, he said.
The company has secured orders for its smart healthcare, smart manufacturing and smart retail solutions, Hsu said.
Asustek’s board of directors yesterday proposed distributing a cash dividend of NT$14 per share.
Separately yesterday, rival PC maker Acer Inc (宏碁) posted net profit of NT$2.63 billion for last quarter, a 13.98 percent decline from the previous year, with earnings per share falling to NT$0.87.
The company’s board of directors has proposed distributing a cash dividend of NT$0.77 per common share.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS