Pegatron Corp (和碩), one of Apple Inc’s iPhone assemblers, on Friday reported that first-quarter revenue declined 33.38 percent from the previous quarter and was 5.31 percent lower than a year earlier, reflecting lost sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consolidated revenue in the January-to-March period totaled NT$278.49 billion (US$9.25 billion), compared with NT$418.01 billion in the previous three months and NT$294.11 billion a year earlier, the electronics manufacturer said in a regulatory filing.
Last quarter’s figure was its lowest in nearly two years, but higher than the NT$274.4 billion Taishin Securities Investment Advisory Co (台新投顧) had estimated.
Apart from handsets, Pegatron manufactures notebook and desktop computers, wearable devices and game consoles, with major clients such as Apple, Sony Corp, Microsoft Corp and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩).
Pegatron is expected to see a sequential increase in revenue this quarter, as it last month resumed full production in China and is ready to produce new products for clients, as well as orders from the first quarter that were delayed due to COVID-19, Taishin said, adding that second-quarter revenue might grow 18 percent from the first quarter to NT$324.2 billion.
Despite recovering market demand for the company’s products and the rise of remote schooling and telecommuting, potential delays in the mass production of new products and weak demand would still likely affect Pegatron’s sales in the second half of the year, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a note.
The pandemic has also caused Quanta Computer Inc’s (廣達) first-quarter revenue to decrease 36.02 percent quarterly and 14.04 percent annually to NT$190.264 billion, its lowest in 10 years, the contract maker of laptops, servers and smartwatches reported on Friday.
Quanta said that the pandemic had especially affected its laptop production in China in the first quarter, but it expects laptop and server shipments to grow this quarter after production resumes at its Chinese plants and with deferred orders from the first quarter.
The company is still uncertain about sales in the second half of the year, which depend on how long COVID-19 persists in the US and Europe.
Other major contract electronics manufacturers also reported an annual decline in sales last quarter as the coronavirus outbreak affected shipments, with Inventec Corp’s (英業達) revenue decreasing 22.8 percent to NT$88.58 billion, Wistron Corp’s (緯創) falling 15.8 percent to NT$173.68 billion and Compal Electronics Inc’s (仁寶) dropping 13.56 percent to NT$182.05 billion.
Analysts said that one potential catalyst for contract electronics makers this year is the deployment of 5G infrastructure, while gaming-related businesses would also benefit from Nvidia Corp’s major upgrade to its graphics processing units later this year.
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