Mixed-signal ICs and display chips supplier Parade Technologies Ltd (譜瑞) yesterday provided an upbeat outlook for its business in the first half of this year on healthy demand from clients.
“So far we have not seen any differences in orders from our customers... We had a pretty strong booking for shipments this quarter and [there are] no material changes in cancelations,” Parade cofounder and CEO Jack Zhao (趙捷) said at a quarterly earnings conference in Taipei.
“Demand from our [display] panel customers remains very healthy,” Zhao said, adding that the company has had continuous orders throughout the Lunar New Year holiday.
The company said revenue this quarter would reach between US$95 million and US$105 million, with an estimated gross margin of between 41.5 percent and 44.5 percent.
“We have taken into consideration the coronavirus situation in China in our estimates,” Zhao said.
The epidemic is likely to be resolved soon, allowing business to return to normal by the third quarter, he added.
Zhao said the company is seeking to further boost business for its high-speed signal transmission interface solutions segment with its peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) 4.0 retimer, which is mainly used in data centers and servers.
Parade is shipping a small amount of the PCIe 4.0 devices at the moment, Zhao said, indicating that the product is still being tested by its client Intel Corp, which last month reportedly delayed PCIe 4.0 support for its upcoming Comet Lake series of desktop processors.
The company is also focusing on sales of more traditional high-speed interface products, such as USB-C 3.1 and 3.2, to increase segment revenue, Zhao said.
Meanwhile, its embedded DisplayPort (eDP) solutions have had steady and robust market demand over the past quarters.
“We are seeing a high growth rate for [our] eDP Tcon [timing controllers] used in laptop LCD panels,” Zhao said, attributing the increase to the booming gaming.
Last quarter, the company posted a slight year-on-year decline of 7.66 percent in net profit to US$20.72 million.
Earnings per share dipped from US$0.28 a year earlier to US$0.27 last quarter.
Fourth-quarter revenue contracted by 4.99 percent year-on-year to US$96.18 million, while gross margin increased from 41.91 percent to 43.48 percent due to an improving product mix and lower memory component prices.
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