Networking chip designer Realtek Semiconductor Corp (瑞昱) yesterday said that a novel coronavirus outbreak in China has yet to affect its orders and it remains positive about the current quarter amid rising demand for its Wi-Fi chips.
However, as many of its Chinese customers would not resume operation until Monday next week because of the outbreak, it is not clear how it might affect the company, Realtek said.
“We saw stable customer demand before the Lunar New Year holiday... We are cautiously optimistic about the first-quarter outlook,” Realtek spokesman Huang Yee-wei (黃依瑋) told investors during a teleconference. “So far, we have not seen any significant changes in orders.”
Realtek is working on several flexible ways to keep major and time-sensitive projects going as planned, Huang said.
“Everything is manageable now,” he said.
Moreover, the company has a broad customer base, including Huawei Technologies Inc (華為), and no single client accounts for a large part of its revenue source, he said.
CHINESE MARKET
“We believe demand from the [Chinese] market would be sustainable,” Huang said. “China is a very big consumer [electronics] market.”
Realtek has 1,000 employees based in China, mostly in Shenzhen and Suzhou, Huang said.
The company expects revenue to continue growing this year, driven primarily by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth chips and those used in switches, Internet-of-Things devices and TVs, Huang said.
Revenue last year jumped 32.6 percent to NT$60.74 billion (US$2.01 billion) from NT$45.81 billion in 2018, after fourth-quarter sales rose 39.7 percent annually, company data showed.
Net income soared 56.1 percent to an all-time high of NT$6.79 billion, compared with NT$4.35 billion in 2018.
Earnings per share rose to NT$13.36 from NT$8.57.
In the fourth quarter alone, net income soared 49.9 percent to NT$1.64 billion, from NT$914 million in the same period a year earlier, but declined 14.5 percent from NT$1.92 billion in the third quarter.
EARBUDS
With “true wireless stereo” (TWS) earbuds becoming a hit after Apple Inc introduced its products last year, investor interest in Realtek’s Bluetooth chips, which are used in the earbuds, has increased, the company said.
Realtek said it is developing new noise-canceling TWS solutions for customers, some of whom are planning to launch them this quarter.
The new single chips used in these earbuds cost more than US$2 each, about 33 percent higher than non-single chips.
Realtek expects worldwide TWS earbud shipments to reach 200 million units this year, with half of them coming from Apple.
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