Wistron Corp (緯創) yesterday said it expects revenue this year to grow by a high double-digit percentage annually, driven by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers amid data center build-outs by major cloud service providers.
Major customers have not shown any slowdown in AI infrastructure spending because of the Middle East conflict, Wistron chairman Simon Lin (林憲銘) told an online earnings conference.
Revenue this quarter is expected to be better than the first quarter last year and the momentum is likely to continue in the following quarters, Lin said.
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Wistron on Thursday reported fourth-quarter net profit of NT$8.17 billion (US$255.97 million), up 10.3 percent quarter-on-quarter and 53.7 percent year-on-year.
Earnings per share increased to NT$2.6 from NT$2.36 in the previous quarter and NT$1.85 a year earlier.
Revenue in the fourth quarter last year rose 142.6 percent year-on-year to NT$720.94 billion, the company said.
Gross margin fell to 5.62 percent, down 1.77 percentage points quarter-on-quarter and 2.47 percentage points year-on-year, it said.
Lin attributed the decline to changes in the company’s product mix, such as increasing shipments of rack-related products.
As AI servers have accounted for about 70 percent of Wistron’s revenue in the first two months of this year, the company would closely monitor the dynamics of AI infrastructure investments and adjust its strategies accordingly, he said.
For now, demand is high for AI-related products powered by graphics processing units, application-specific integrated circuits and central processing units, he said.
However, global notebook computer shipments are expected to decline by 5 to 10 percent annually this year due to rising memory prices and supply shortages, Wistron president Jeff Lin (林建勳) said.
As rising memorychip prices are expected to increase the average selling price for notebooks, revenue for the products might be flat or post a slight growth this year, Jeff Lin said.
For Wistron, notebook shipments would “definitely not be worse than the broader market,” supported by strong customer relationships and newly secured orders, he said.
Wistron also secured participation in its major customers’ next-generation server-level 10 assembly projects, he said.
Wistron’s factory expansion in the US has proceeded smoothly and the company expects to begin shipments from the plant as early as the end of this quarter, Simon Lin said.
The company expects capital expenditure this year to jump about 69 percent to NT$60 billion from NT$35.5 billion last year, with most of the investment earmarked for AI-related product capacity expansion in Taiwan and North America, he said.
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