High-speed data transmission chip designer ASMedia Technology Inc (祥碩) said it has clinched a new deal for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for computers and expects revenue contribution to start in the second half of this year.
The company did not name the new customer, but said the new chipsets would be used in notebook, desktop and industrial computers.
“About the new customer, we have to abide by the nondisclosure principles,” ASMedia president Lin Che-wei (林哲偉) told an earnings conference on Tuesday.
Photo: Vanessa Cho, Taipei Times
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) has long been the sole customer for ASMedia’s ASIC business. The Taiwanese firm mainly designs USB host and device controllers and chipsets for the US chip company. AMD accounted for 60 percent of ASMedia’s chipset revenue last quarter.
ASMedia would continue to play a dominant role in designing chipsets for AMD next year, as it is set to deliver a new sample based on AMD’s next-generation “Olympic Ridge” platform next month, the company said.
The shortages of memory chips and central processing units have weighed on the global PC market this year, with the supply constraints likely to cause PC motherboard shipments to drop about 15 to 20 percent annually, Lin said.
It has also affected the PC DIY market this year and could extend into the first half of next year, he added.
“Because of surges in memory prices and [tight] CPU supply, we are conservative about the outlook for the second quarter and second half of this year,” Lin said. “To cope with the situation, we are accelerating the expansion of our own-brand products, including packet switch and USB4.0 used in PCs.”
ASMedia plans to ship a new-generation own-brand PCIe Gen4 switch in the third quarter, aiming to raise switch revenue to 10 percent of overall sales, it said.
The company reported record net profit of NT$1.85 billion (US$58.72 million) for the first quarter, up 52 percent from NT$1.22 billion a year earlier and 24 percent from NT$1.5 billion in the previous quarter.
Earnings per share jumped to NT$24.85, from NT$16.39 a year earlier and NT$20.08 the previous quarter.
The growth was mainly driven by a NT$1.13 billion gain in non-operating income, as operating income was almost flat from the previous quarter’s NT$808 million, it said.
Gross margin slid to 51 percent last quarter, from 55 percent a year earlier and 52 percent the prior quarter, the company said.
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