Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) expects fourth-quarter revenue to grow sequentially and annually on higher shipments of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) power supply products, company president Anson Chiu (邱森彬) said yesterday.
The electronic components maker expects the growth momentum to persist next year on the back of strong AI demand, Chiu said at an earnings conference in Taipei.
The company aims for AI-related business to account for more than 20 percent of total revenue this year and to continue to increase next year, he said.
Photo: CNA
Lite-On yesterday reported that net profit in the third quarter rose 47.2 percent quarter-on-quarter and 37 percent year-on-year to NT$4.65 billion (US$151.81 million). Earnings per share improved to NT$2.05 from NT$1.39 in the previous quarter and NT$1.48 in the third quarter last year.
Third-quarter revenue rose 11 percent quarter-on-quarter and 22 percent year-on-year to NT$44.89 billion, driven by strong growth in cloud computing and the AI-of-Things, the company said.
Sales in the cloud computing and AI-of-Things segments accounted for 48 percent of total sales, followed by the information technology and consumer electronics segment at 36 percent, and the optoelectronics segment at 16 percent, it said.
Operating margin was 10.4 percent, up 1.2 percentage points from the previous quarter, but down 0.3 points year-on-year, while gross margin rose to 25 percent, up 2.9 percentage points quarter-on-quarter and 2.6 percentage points year-on-year, it added.
The company last quarter added two new battery backup unit (BBU) production lines in the US, which would increase its current capacity by 30 percent, Chiu said.
The company’s major client for the BBU business is a leading cloud service provider, he said, without naming it.
Customers have preordered all of next year’s BBU capacity, he added.
Its US plant would mainly handle BBU production, followed by its Kaohsiung and China plants, he said, adding that the company has also been expanding its power supply unit (PSU) production lines in Vietnam and Kaohsiung.
Lite-On would continue to invest in the US and Vietnam to meet strong demand for BBUs next year, he said.
The company supplies PSUs primarily to graphics processing unit makers and application-specific integrated circuit makers, he added.
Total capital expenditure this year is expected to reach between NT$6 billion and NT$7 billion, up 25 percent from last year, Lite-On chief financial officer K.T. Lim (林建忠) said, adding that spending next year is expected to rise further to NT$7 billion.
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