Passive components maker Yageo Corp (國巨) yesterday said revenue would be flat or grow modestly this quarter amid steady market demand, ending three straight quarters of declines.
Yageo’s revenue has dropped for three straight quarters amid sluggish demand and excessive inventory.
In the first quarter of this year, revenue contracted 9.5 percent quarter-on-quarter and 13.4 percent year-on-year to NT$26.1 billion (US$852.6 million), while net income shrank 0.8 percent quarterly and 33.8 percent annually to NT$4.13 billion, the company said.
Photo: Chang Hui-wen, Taipei Times
Yageo CEO David Wang (王淡如) said revenue would stop falling this quarter and likely be flat or increase slightly from last quarter.
“Hopefully, this will be a good sign,” he told an online investors’ conference in Taipei. “Visibility is not clear yet, but the second half of the year is usually a high season and will be slightly higher than the first half.”
Gross margin would improve slightly from 33 percent in the first quarter, primarily due to cost management and a better product portfolio, he said.
Yageo’s gross margin has fallen since it posted 38.8 percent in the second quarter of last year.
The average selling prices of Yageo products is expected to be stable this quarter, it said.
INVENTORY WOES
Yageo executive vice president of global sales and marketing Claudio Lollini said the firm’s inventory level remains quite high, particularly at global distributors, even though the situation is slightly better in China.
Demand for passive components used in smartphones and laptop computers has not returned to the pre-slump level, Lollini said, but added that Yageo continues to see encouraging signs from the industrial and automotive segments.
Components for the two segments were the biggest revenue sources last quarter, contributing 23 percent and 31 percent respectively.
Factory utilization would hold steady at 70 percent for its premium products this quarter, Wang said, adding that utilization for its commodity products would be unchanged at 40 to 50 percent.
Premium passive components, including multilayer ceramic capacitors, contributed 75 percent to Yageo’s total revenue last quarter, with commodity components making up the remaining 25 percent.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS