Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) yesterday said it shipped 59.8 million laptops last year, a 70.37 percent increase year-on-year and the highest in the company’s history, thanks to work-from-home and distance learning demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company said its other products, such as servers, also fared well amid the spike in demand for information and communications technology products during the pandemic.
Net profit in the fourth quarter of last year surged 91.11 percent year-on-year to NT$8.63 billion (US$302.6 million), or earnings per share of NT$2.24.
Photo: Vanessa Cho, Taipei Times
Revenue rose 1.89 percent to NT$303.03 billion, the firm said.
Gross margin improved by 1.22 percentage points to 6.19 percent, it said in a statement.
Net profit last year rose 58.9 percent from a year earlier to NT$25.33 billion, or earnings per share of NT$6.57, up 58.9 percent annually and the highest in 21 years.
Revenue rose 5.9 percent year-on-year to NT$1.09 trillion.
Gross margin rose 1.09 percentage points to 5.86 percent, the company said.
Quanta said its board of directors has proposed paying a cash dividend of NT$5.2 per share.
That translates into a dividend yield of 5.25 percent, based on Quanta’s closing price of NT$99 yesterday.
Separately, contract electronics manufacturer Inventec Corp (英業達) posted net profit of NT$6.57 billion for last year, up 36 percent from a year earlier, on revenue of NT$508.29 billion, which rose 1 percent.
With earnings per share of NT$2.1 for last year, the company said it plans to distribute a cash dividend of NT$1.85 per share, representing a yield of 6.73 percent based on yesterday’s closing price of NT$27.5.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of