Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) expects revenue this quarter to grow sequentially and year-on-year, driven by demand for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) power management systems, as well as integrated power and energy-storage racks, company president Anson Chiu (邱森彬) told an earnings conference in Taipei yesterday.
The company expects the growth momentum to extend into next quarter and through the rest of the year, Chiu said.
Demand for integrated power racks boosted shipments last quarter of the company’s 33 kilowatt (kW) power shelves and backup battery units (BBUs) after it added several new US cloud service providers to its customer base, he said.
Photo: CNA
Lite-On plans to begin mass production of its new 110kW power shelves next quarter to support Nvidia Corp’s next-generation Rubin platform, he said.
With the rollout of the new power shelves, the company expects AI-related business to contribute more than 30 percent to total revenue this year, up from 20 percent last year, Chiu said.
The company began mass production of its 50 volt direct-current power racks earlier this quarter, while its 800-volt high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) rack system is undergoing testing and could enter volume production by the end of this year, he said.
Lite-On yesterday reported fourth-quarter net profit of NT$3.86 billion (US$123.17 million), down 16.89 percent quarter-on-quarter, but up 26.6 percent year-on-year.
Earnings per share fell to NT$1.7, from NT$2.05 in the previous quarter and NT$1.33 a year earlier.
Fourth-quarter revenue last year rose 16 percent year-on-year to NT$44.36 billion, driven by growth in cloud computing and AI-of-Things applications, 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 37 percent and the optoelectronics segment at 15 percent, it said.
Gross margin fell to 21.7 percent, down 3.3 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, due to an accounting adjustment related to tariffs, but up 0.4 percentage points from a year earlier, the company said.
Lite-On’s BBU capacity remains tight after doubling output last year, Chiu said.
The company plans to double BBU capacity again this year, he said.
The company plans to increase the number of its BBU production lines to 12 this year from eight last year, while also developing a new type of BBU tailored for 800 volt HVDC systems in addition to its existing products, he said.
Total capital expenditure this year is expected to rise 57.1 percent to NT$11 billion from last year, with most spending earmarked for its plants in Vietnam and Kaohsiung, Lite-On chief financial officer K.T. Lim (林建忠) said.
All of the new capacity is expected to go online as early as the third quarter, Lin said.
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