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.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to