Largan Precision Co (大立光), a major camera lens supplier to Apple Inc’s iPhones, yesterday said that it expects revenue to dip further next month, dampened by semiconductor supply constraints and fewer working days due to the Lunar New Year holiday.
As order visibility remains low, Largan cannot provide a clear business outlook for March and this quarter, Largan chief executive Adam Lin (林恩平) told an investors’ teleconference.
“It appears that January [revenue] will be weaker than December. February will be even lower due to the Lunar New Year holiday,” Lin said.
Photo: David Chang, EPA-EFE
It is still premature to predict when revenue would return to monthly growth, he said.
“The scarcity of semiconductors remains severe and that spells some problems,” Lin said. “We do not have a clear picture for March.”
Largan attributed the shortage of some semiconductors to lower revenue last month, missing the company’s estimate of no change from November last year.
However, customers remain active in designing new camera lenses for premium smartphones this quarter, the Taichung-based firm said.
It has received as many projects this quarter as in the same period last year, Lin said.
It is uncertain whether those projects would ultimately contribute to revenue, he said.
In the third quarter last year, one of Largan’s customers scrapped its orders for high-end, high-margin camera lenses, dealing a blow to its gross margin last quarter.
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) was widely believed to be the customer after the US imposed a ban on some exports to the Chinese company.
The order loss drove gross margin down to 64.43 percent from 65.65 percent in the previous quarter, the weakest in seven quarters.
Gross margin for all of last year dipped to 66.98 percent, the firm’s lowest since 2015.
Twenty-megapixel lenses accounted for 10 to 20 percent of its overall shipments last quarter, down from 20 to 30 percent in the third quarter last year, the company said.
To fill the capacity void, Largan does not rule out the possibility of producing mid-range lenses for customers at good prices, Lin said.
The company would supply voice coil motors (VCM) on request, as it has been making them for the past five or six years, he said.
The company is reportedly to start supplying VCMs for new iPhones this year.
Net profit tumbled 19.41 percent to NT$6.52 billion (US$229.34 million) last quarter, compared with NT$8.09 billion in the same quarter of 2019, but rose 18.4 percent from NT$5.87 billion in the third quarter last year.
Earnings per share (EPS) dipped to NT$51.83 last quarter from NT$60.32 a year earlier, an increase from NT$43.74 in the prior quarter.
Largan’s net profit last year was NT$24.53 billion, contracting 13 percent from NT$28.26 billion in 2018. EPS fell to NT$182.86 from NT$210.7.
Separately, Largan said that a new plant would become operational in 2023 as scheduled.
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
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
RSS