Advantech Co (研華) chairman K.C. Liu (劉克振) yesterday said that a surge in the New Taiwan dollar would affect the embedded computer module and industrial motherboard maker’s revenue and earnings per share.
“The company’s revenue would see a bearable decrease, and as we would calculate it by the NT dollar, our earnings per share and share price might fall a bit as well, but we will earn that loss back from other sectors,” Liu said at a news conference in Taoyuan.
Advantech mainly conducts transactions with US dollars in overseas markets but uses the NT dollar as the reporting currency in its financial statements. Therefore, an appreciation of about 3 to 5 percent in the NT dollar would definitely result in foreign exchange losses and affect the company's profits, but the outcome is bearable, he said.
Photo: CNA
The NT dollar traded at NT$30.145 against the US dollar yesterday, gaining 2.96 percent. It has risen 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions.
Asked about the potential impact of US tariffs, he said the company would share the costs with clients and partly absorb them.
The US tariff rate for Taiwanese goods might not be as high as 32 percent, and it might be 15 to 20 percent instead, so it would not be a crisis for the company, he added.
Taiwan-made industrial computers are difficult to replace, and the tariff uncertainty would eventually pass, so the situation is not critical, Liu said.
However, to cope with the predictable revenue decline, Advantech would continue to work on the application of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and software systems to provide higher value for clients, he said.
Advantech is building new factories in southern California, where half the land has been reserved for future expansion, he said.
The company has set up plants in northern California for 20 years to assemble large system products, he added.
Some of the company’s board members have urged Advantech to set up surface mount technology (SMT) plants in the US to avoid high import levies, Liu said.
However, setting up SMT plants in the US would require taking labor, cost and flexibility into consideration, while the complex, low-volume and diverse nature of SMT production would also require sending experienced supervisors abroad, inevitably increasing expenses, he added.
Looking ahead, amid rising demand for edge AI computing and artificial intelligence of things, Advantech could expand its presence in the smart factories and energy as well as retail and hospitality sectors, he said.
The company is to showcase edge AI applications at the Computex Taipei trade show from May 20 to 23, including autonomous robots, robotic arms and service robots developed with partners, he added.
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