E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s largest e-paper display supplier, yesterday said it expects its revenue and net profit to hit historical highs in the next three years through 2028, fueled by rising uptakes of its new large signage, and robust demand for store shelf labels and electronic readers with color displays.
To cope with growing customer demand, E Ink plans to build a new production line, called H6, to expand capacity for large e-paper displays, such as 30-inch displays for indoor and outdoor signage, the company said.
Multiple production lines are planned, as the company’s board of directors approved a new capacity program totaling NT$3.37 billion (US$107.83 million) for acquiring land and leasing a manufacturing facility in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音), it said.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
“We have a chance to see E Ink’s revenue and profit hit record highs in the next two to three years,” E Ink chairman Johnson Lee (李政昊) told investors via an online conference.
The e-paper displays used in signage would outgrow other business segments next year due to a lower base, Lee said.
E Ink is counting on a new e-paper display production line, dubbed H5, to bring extra growth next year, he said.
“We expect our large-e-paper module factory to be fully utilized next year. The module production line operated by our joint venture with AUO Corp (友達) will also be fully loaded,” Lee said.
The e-paper displays for electronic shelf labels (ESLs) would come next, as the major international retailers in the US, the UK and Europe are increasingly replacing paper labels with ESLs, Lee said.
US tariffs and labor shortages have prompted large-scale retailers to quicken their pace to install ESLs, he said.
This year, E Ink expects to ship 25 percent more ESL e-paper displays to 500 million units, compared with about 370 million last year, Lee said.
The growth would extend into next year, he added.
The company also expects growth from e-paper displays used in e-readers and e-notes, driven by replacement demand for those equipped with color displays.
The integration of artificial intelligence features into those devices is also boosting consumers’ interest, the company said.
E Ink’s revenue grew at an annual rate of 29 percent to NT$29.1 billion in the first three quarters from NT$22.49 billion.
Net profit surged 76 percent to NT$9.4 billion in the first three quarters from NT$5.35 billion in the same period last year, setting an all-time high. That surpassed the NT$8.87 billion the company reported for the whole year of last year.
Earnings per share climbed to NT$8.17 from NT$4.67 over the period, company data showed.
Gross margin rose to 56.44 percent from 47.84 percent a year earlier, according to the data.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
POTENTIAL demand: Tesla’s chance of reclaiming its leadership in EVs seems uncertain, but breakthrough in full self-driving could help boost sales, an analyst said Chinese auto giant BYD Co (比亞迪) is poised to surpass Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV) company in annual sales. The two groups are expected to soon publish their final figures for this year, and based on sales data so far this year, there is almost no chance the US company led by CEO Elon Musk would retain its leadership position. As of the end of last month, BYD, which also produces hybrid vehicles, had sold 2.07 million EVs. Tesla, for its part, had sold 1.22 million by the end of September. Tesla’s September figures included a one-time boost in
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
RSS