E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技) yesterday announced capacity expansion projects in Taiwan and China, as the world’s biggest e-paper display supplier aims to boost production of e-paper materials and flexible films.
The company plans to invest NT$3.31 billion (US$110.4 million) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) and 3.25 million yuan (US$479,400) at its Chinese facilities in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, it said.
The Hsinchu-based firm said its manufacturing capacity continues to be tight and it is unable to fully satisfy customer demand.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
Through 2024, the company plans to spend between NT$5 billion and NT$6 billion each year to fund those projects, it said.
“We are relatively positive about our business outlook,” E Ink chairman Johnson Lee (李政昊) told an online investors’ conference. “With more capacity coming online, we expect the third quarter would be better than the second quarter. The fourth quarter would also be better than the third.”
The anticipated sequential growth in revenue and net profit in the second half of the year comes as the world’s major retailers quicken pace in installing electronic shelf labels (ESLs), offsetting weakening demand for e-reader and e-note products, E Ink said.
Although consumers have turned cautious about spending on consumer electronics, including e-readers and e-notes, in the second half of the year, ESL demand remains strong, Lee said.
The shipments of e-reader modules could be 10 percent lower than E Ink’s estimates for this year, but they would still grow over last year, the company said.
More retailers are adopting ESLs rather than paper price tags to adjust prices automatically, Lee said, adding that ESL replacement demand remained strong.
“The ESL market is entering an organic growth phase. We believe it is still in an early stage of growth,” he said.
E Ink expects the penetration rate of ESLs to surpass 10 percent this year, compared with about 5 percent in the past few years.
The market could reach 30 billion or 40 billion units based on some customers’ calculations, he said.
E Ink posted a record-high net profit of NT$2.37 billion for last quarter, surging 71 percent from NT$1.39 billion a year earlier.
The company said it has seen a significant annual growth in e-reader shipments in the first half of this year.
The company’s first-half net profit expanded 50 percent year-on-year to NT$3.84 billion from NT$2.56 billion, while earnings per share rose to NT$3.36 from NT$2.26 a year earlier.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six