E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), which supplies e-paper displays for Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle series, yesterday reported that profit grew last year on higher royalty income and better gross margin.
Net income surged to NT$539 million (US$16.7 million), or NT$0.47 per share, last year from NT$13.48 million, or NT$0.01 a share, in 2014. Gross margin climbed to a record-high of 31 percent from 22 percent over the same period.
The profit figure fell short of Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$822 million in net profit for last year.
E Ink financial executive Lloyd Chen (陳樂群) attributed the upswing in gross margin to a combination of factors: better product portfolio, higher yield rates, lower raw material costs and an improvement in labor and manufacturing costs.
The company, with 70 percent of its revenue coming from e-paper displays, faced slow demand in the first quarter of the year as consumers tightened spending amid weak macroeconomic conditions, Chen said.
Combined revenue in January and February contracted 15.17 percent to NT$1.46 billion, E Ink Holdings data showed.
As E Ink has been struggling in its core business over the past four years, given lukewarm growth in e-readers and lackluster demand for LCD panels, the company has been counting on contributions from royalty fees to make a profit.
Last year, E Ink booked royalty payments of NT$3 billion from licensing an LCD manufacturing technology owned by its South Korean subsidiary Hydis Technologies Co to partners, including LCD panel manufacturers. The technology is widely used in handsets, including Apple Inc’s iPhones.
As a result, E Ink saw its operating losses fall to NT$449 million last year from NT$1.39 billion in 2014.
E Ink’s profitability last year was dragged by extra spending after Hydis shut down all its LCD factories. E Ink booked NT$1.86 billion in expenses from the South Korean LCD manufacturing subsidiary last year.
The expenses from Hydis will drop drastically this year as a big chunk of last year’s expenses were one-off payments for preferential employee retirement programs and severance payments, Chen said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS