Touch module and sensor supplier TPK Holding Co (宸鴻) yesterday gave a dismal revenue outlook for this quarter due to order losses.
Revenue is forecast to slump between 20 and 25 percent from NT$32.85 billion (US$1.14 billion) last quarter, TPK chief strategic officer Freddie Liu (劉詩亮) told investors in a teleconference.
Liu attributed the projected contraction mainly to a dearth of new orders.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
“As customers are monitoring how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect sales of end products over the next one to two months, we are conservative about the fourth-quarter outlook,” Liu said. “On top of that, the company is facing a product transition period, meaning new product output will not be as good as before.”
One of TPK’s clients has adjusted its specifications for smartphones and did not place orders for TPK’s touch display lamination services, Liu said.
As a result, TPK expects a continuous decline in revenue from the smartphone segment in the short to medium term, he said.
TPK’s revenue last month dipped 27.2 percent to NT$7.71 billion from NT$10.59 billion in September, and declined 46.7 percent compared with NT$14.48 billion a year earlier, he said.
The smartphone segment is the second-largest revenue source for TPK, making up 34 percent of its total revenue last quarter, a company financial statement showed.
The firm is seeking new business to fill the void over the next few quarters, Liu said.
TPK faces a mounting risk of weakening revenue due to a seasonal downturn, he said.
“The effect of the slow season is usually very severe,” he said.
The company expects to remain profitable this quarter through further improvement in operating efficiency and cost savings, Liu said.
Operating margin is expected to be between 0.5 and 1 percent this quarter, compared with 0.7 percent last quarter, he said.
TPK continues to benefit from growing demand for touch display solutions used in notebook computers and tablets amid remote working and online-learning trends due to the COVID-19 pandemic, TPK chief executive officer Leo Hsieh (謝立群) said.
“The growth momentum for tablets is quite healthy in the fourth quarter, mostly due to the pandemic,” Hsieh said.
The final quarter of the year is usually the peak season for tablets and laptops, he said.
TPK reported that net profit surged about 44 percent quarterly to NT$443 million last quarter, the highest in 10 quarters, boosted by NT$65 million in currency arbitrage gains.
On an annual basis, net profit skyrocketed 93.8 percent from NT$228 million.
Earnings per share jumped to NT$1.09 last quarter from NT$0.76 in the preceding quarter and NT$0.56 a year earlier.
Regular-sized tablets contributed 20 percent to TPK’s revenue last quarter, while notebook computers and larger tablets made up the biggest revenue share of 41 percent, the financial statement showed.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS