Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday reported a net profit of NT$2.74 billion (US$98 million) for last quarter, marking the PC brand’s highest quarterly earnings in a decade.
That represented growth of 391 percent from NT$558 million a year earlier.
On a quarterly basis, net profit jumped about 37 percent from NT$1.99 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.
Photo: CNA
Earnings per share surged to NT$0.91 last quarter from NT$0.18 a year earlier and NT$0.67 the previous quarter.
Consolidated revenue reached NT$71.56 billion in the first quarter, up 46.5 percent year-on-year.
Gross profit was NT$8.31 billion, up 67.9 percent year-on-year.
Operating income was NT$2.81 billion, “with a historically high first-quarter margin of 3.9 percent,” a news release by Acer said.
Continued strong demand for notebook PCs contributed to Acer’s robust first-quarter figures.
The distance-learning market in the US, Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia is going strong, while the company’s first-quarter Chromebook sales grew 141 percent year-on-year, a report by the Chinese language Commercial Times said.
Acer’s investment in e-sports has also paid off, with its e-sports laptops, desktops and monitors growing 87 percent year-on-year, the report said.
Acer also announced yesterday on the Taiwan Stock Exchange that it would be selling 4.6 million shares of its subsidiary Highpoint Service Network Corp (海柏特).
According to the Chinese-
language Web site cnyes.com, Highpoint is planning an initial public offering (IPO) in the fourth quarter of this year.
It aims to list on the emerging market index in the second quarter of next year and move to the Taiwan Stock Exchange in the second quarter of 2023, if everything goes well, cnyes.com said.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares yesterday notched their best two-day rally on record, as investors flock to the Taiwanese chip designer on excitement over its tie-up with Google. The Taipei-listed stock jumped 8.59 percent, capping a two-session surge of 19 percent and closing at a fresh all-time high of NT$1,770. That extended a two-month rally on growing awareness of MediaTek’s work on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), which are chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It also highlights how fund managers faced with single-stock limits on their holding of market titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are diversifying into other AI-related firms.
RSS