Merry Electronics Co (美律), a supplier of headsets and speakers for notebooks and smartphones, yesterday said that third-quarter revenue would improve from the second quarter due to peak season demand and stronger headset shipments. However, year-on-year growth is projected to remain flat due to the sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar.
The Taichung-based company reported second-quarter revenue of NT$10.33 billion (US$349.9 million), a 0.31 percent increase from the same period last year.
The NT dollar’s 7.9 percent year-on-year appreciation against the US dollar erased what could have been 8 percent annual growth in revenue last quarter, as the company’s sales are all denominated in US dollars, Merry president Allen Huang (黃朝豐) said at an online earnings conference.
Photo courtesy of Merry Electronics Co
For every 1 percent appreciation of the NT dollar, the company’s revenue is reduced by 1 percent, and gross margin is cut by 0.3 percentage points, Huang said.
Gross margin dropped to 11.71 percent in the second quarter, down from 13.14 percent a year earlier, due to exchange-rate fluctuations, client-driven price cuts in April, shared tariff costs and rising labor costs in Southeast Asia, he said.
The figure is expected to improve this quarter as the company continues to optimize costs and its product portfolio, he added.
Net profit plunged 99.46 percent year-on-year to NT$2.62 million in the second quarter, compared with NT$491 million a year earlier, while earnings per share also decreased to NT$0.01 from NT$2.24, the company said.
The company reported a foreign exchange loss of NT$472 million, a significant drop from a gain of NT$129 million in the same period last year. Nonoperating losses also widened to NT$197 million in the second quarter, it said.
Operating expenses rose 2.12 percent year-on-year to NT$965 million, driven by an expansion in research-and-development staffing, a shift in production from China to Vietnam and Thailand, and the development of new product lines, including speakers, Huang said.
In the second quarter, headsets — including true wireless stereo (TWS) earphones, gaming headsets and audio headsets — accounted for 70 percent of the company’s total revenue, while speakers contributed 23 percent and other products, such as microphones and hearing aids, made up 7 percent.
The company expects shipments of audio and gaming headsets to rise year-on-year this quarter, although TWS earphone shipments might decline, Huang said.
While overall momentum is expected to improve from the previous quarter, revenue for the segment is likely to remain flat from the previous year due to exchange-rate fluctuations, he said.
Speaker shipments are expected to rise from the previous quarter, but decline year-on-year due to weaker demand for smartphone and earbud speakers, he added.
Microphone shipments are expected to decline both annually and sequentially, as the front-loading effect fades, while hearing aid shipments are expected to continue growing this quarter, driven by new orders from a leading US over-the-counter hearing aid client, Huang said.
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
DOLLAR SIGNS: The central bank rejected claims that the NT dollar had appreciated 10 percentage points more than the yen or the won against the greenback The New Taiwan dollar yesterday fell for a sixth day to its weakest level in three months, driven by equity-related outflows and reactions to an economics official’s exchange rate remarks. The NT dollar slid NT$0.197, or 0.65 percent, to close at NT$30.505 per US dollar, central bank data showed. The local currency has depreciated 1.97 percent so far this month, ranking as the weakest performer among Asian currencies. Dealers attributed the retreat to foreign investors wiring capital gains and dividends abroad after taking profit in local shares. They also pointed to reports that Washington might consider taking equity stakes in chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor
A German company is putting used electric vehicle batteries to new use by stacking them into fridge-size units that homes and businesses can use to store their excess solar and wind energy. This week, the company Voltfang — which means “catching volts” — opened its first industrial site in Aachen, Germany, near the Belgian and Dutch borders. With about 100 staff, Voltfang says it is the biggest facility of its kind in Europe in the budding sector of refurbishing lithium-ion batteries. Its CEO David Oudsandji hopes it would help Europe’s biggest economy ween itself off fossil fuels and increasingly rely on climate-friendly renewables. While
RSS