ASMedia Technology Inc’s (祥碩) stock price rallied to a more than three-week high yesterday, after the USB controller supplier forecast revenue growth for every quarter this year after hitting the bottom in the fourth quarter of last year.
ASMedia shares rose 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,180 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, marking the highest price since closing at NT$1,190 on April 24.
However, the company, which is 32 percent owned by PC vendor Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), still holds a cautious view about the recovery of market demand, as macroeconomic uncertainty continues to weigh on consumer behavior, it said on Wednesday.
“We hope to see business trending up each quarter of this year,” ASMedia president Chewei Lin (林哲偉) told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of the company’s USB4 product in Taipei.
“For ASMedia, the fourth quarter of last year was the worst quarter of this downturn. We have seen sequential growth of about 40 percent in the first quarter by revenue. We believe the second quarter will be a better period than the first quarter,” Lin said.
USB4, the most advanced version of USB technology, can boost connection speed by up to 40 gigabits per second, double the speed of the previous version.
With new products gradually hitting the market, ASMedia aims to keep its gross margin in the range of 50 to 55 percent this year and next year by introducing new products with premium prices, the company said.
The company’s gross margin bounced back to 53.1 percent in the first quarter, from a four-year low of 46.5 percent in the final quarter of last year.
ASMedia has received certification for its first high-speed USB4 products used in mobile devices, such as handsets and portable storage devices, and aims to receive certification for its USB4 products used in host devices, such as computers, to expand the uptake of its USB4 series, it said.
As these high-speed products are expensive, a significant increase in demand would take time, Lin said.
Eighty percent of its revenue last quarter came from interface technology, USB and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) products, used in computers and other devices, it said.
ASMedia hopes its USB4 products would be used in premium gaming PCs next year, Lin said, adding that the company is developing the next generation of PCIe products, so it could offer the most advanced version of PCIe 5 products next year.
ASMedia reported a quarterly growth of 23 percent in net profit last week, from NT$389.33 million (US$12.65 million) last quarter. That represented an annual decline of 54 percent compared with NT$848.62 million a year earlier.
Earnings per share rose to NT$5.63 last quarter from NT$4.56 the quarter earlier. On an annual basis, earnings per share dropped from NT$12.28.
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