Largan Precision Co (大立光), a supplier of smartphone camera lenses to Apple Inc, yesterday reported that its revenue last month dropped 3.7 percent month-on-month, falling short of the company’s expectations.
The Taichung-based company had expected revenue to be flat last month compared with November.
Largan attributed the lower revenue to weaker customer demand due to supply constraints of key components.
Photo: David Chang, EPA-EFE
The company expects the weakness in revenue momentum to extend into this month as the handset industry enters its slack season, suggesting that revenue would fall further on a monthly basis.
Consolidated revenue was NT$4.91 billion (US$172.88 million) last month, down from NT$5.24 billion in November. On an annual basis, revenue declined 6 percent from NT$5.1 billion.
That brought last quarter’s revenue to NT$15.29 billion, plunging 16.72 percent from NT$18.36 billion in the final quarter of 2019.
On a quarterly basis, fourth-quarter revenue inched up 3.38 percent from NT$14.79 billion.
Largan had predicted an annual decline in revenue for last quarter as chief executive officer Adam Lin (林恩平) told investors in October that one of its major customers canceled all of its orders for high-end camera lenses in September.
That would lead to lower utilization rates at the company’s plants, he said.
Lin did not disclose the name of the customer, but it was believed to be Huawei Technologies Co (華為), whose manufacturing had been disrupted by a US ban requiring suppliers to stop shipping items to Huawei if their products contain US technology.
For the whole of last year, Largan’s revenue shrank 7.9 percent to NT$55.94 billion from the record-high NT$60.75 billion in 2019.
Still, last year’s revenue was the second-highest in the company’s history.
Largan is to hold an investors’ conference tomorrow to give financial figures for last quarter and a business outlook for this quarter.
Separately yesterday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler, said revenue surged 32.3 percent to NT$713.78 billion last month from NT$539.51 billion a year earlier.
Last month’s revenue set a record after the new iPhone models hit store shelves. That represented a monthly growth of 4.8 percent from NT$681.38 billion.
Last quarter, revenue jumped 15.3 percent annually and 55.5 percent quarterly to NT$2.01 trillion, marking the best quarterly revenue in the company’s history.
That brought Hon Hai’s revenue for the whole of last year to a new high of NT$5.36 trillion, up 0.31 percent from NT$5.34 trillion the previous year.
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