E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s largest e-paper display supplier, yesterday said it expects moderate revenue decline in the second half of the year, as some e-reader customers have become more conservative about consumer spending amid concerns over US tariffs.
The company’s second-quarter revenue reached a peak for the year to date at NT$10.63 billion (US$354.81 million), driven by front-loading and model transition to color screens from monochrome in the e-reader and e-note markets, it said.
“The market sentiment shows that most people are taking a wait-and-see attitude ... and are relatively conservative about the second half, especially about the consumer sector,” E Ink chairman Johnson Lee (李政昊) told an online investors’ conference.
Photo: CNA
E Ink’s order intake might weaken in the fourth quarter, but it expects an improvement in the first quarter next year, given that most customers are optimistic about the industry’s growth trend, Lee said.
The fourth quarter is a low season for the electronic shelf label (ESL) business, but customers, including system integrators and retailers, are positive about ESL adoption in the long term, he said.
Overall, the company is optimistic about its full-year revenue growth after sales in the first seven months jumped 38.43 percent annually to NT$22.58 billion, it said.
E Ink’s production lines are all fully utilized, which makes it hard to catch up with demand, the company said.
It expects its new production line, called H5, to enter volume production this month or next month after a delay early this year due to technology bottlenecks, it said.
E Ink is investing in its research-and-development team in San Jose, California, and is considering building a pilot production line there as part of the company’s increasing investments in the US, Lee said.
Despite foreign exchange losses of NT$2.14 billion in the second quarter due to the drastic appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, E Ink’s net profit in the quarter grew 47 percent to NT$2.97 billion from NT$2.02 billion in the same quarter last year.
Earnings per share rose to NT$2.58 from NT$1.76 for the same period.
Gross margin last quarter jumped to 60.3 percent from 47.25 percent a year earlier thanks to a favorable product mix and improved operational efficiency, it said.
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a metal casing supplier owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday announced plans to invest US$1 billion in the US over the next decade as part of its business transformation strategy. The Apple Inc supplier said in a statement that its board approved the investment on Thursday, as part of a transformation strategy focused on precision mold development, smart manufacturing, robotics and advanced automation. The strategy would have a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), the company added. The company said it aims to build a flexible, intelligent production ecosystem to boost competitiveness and sustainability. Foxconn
Leading Taiwanese bicycle brands Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) and Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) on Sunday said that they have adopted measures to mitigate the impact of the tariff policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US announced at the beginning of this month that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on imported goods made in Taiwan, effective on Thursday last week. The tariff would be added to other pre-existing most-favored-nation duties and industry-specific trade remedy levy, which would bring the overall tariff on Taiwan-made bicycles to between 25.5 percent and 31 percent. However, Giant did not seem too perturbed by the
RSS