Smartphone camera lens maker Largan Precision Co (大立光) yesterday reported that last quarter’s consolidated revenue fell 10.31 percent from the previous quarter and was also down 15.31 percent year-on-year to NT$8.19 billion (US$263 million).
The second-quarter figure represents the company’s lowest quarterly level since 2013, while its revenue in the first half of the year was NT$17.33 billion, down 12.51 percent from the same period last year, Largan data showed.
Taichung-based Largan is a global company that designs, produces and assembles high-end optical lenses.
Photo: CNA
The company’s customers include Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics Co and several Chinese brands, while its main competitors are Genius Electronic Optical Co (玉晶光) in Taiwan and Sunny Optical Technology Group Co (舜宇光學) in China.
High-margin 20-megapixel or more lenses for smartphone cameras accounted for 20 to 30 percent of the company’s total sales last month, Largan said in a statement.
The majority, or 50 to 60 percent, came from sales of 10-megapixel lenses, while 8-megapixel lenses contributed less than 10 percent, it said.
Handset vendors are still planning specification upgrades for high-end models, and Largan is also designing “G+P” (glass and plastic) lenses to meet client demand.
However, the company’s second-quarter and first-half sales reflect that the global demand for smartphones is still weak as vendors remain cautious about purchasing high-end lenses.
Nonetheless, there is a positive sign in the firm’s business climate as last month’s revenue rose 2.67 percent month-on-month, following a sequential decline of 8.53 percent in May.
At the company’s annual general meeting in Taichung earlier last month, Largan chief executive officer Adam Lin (林恩平) said the company’s sales last month would be higher and better than May, and sales this month would also be higher than last month.
As the second half of a year is traditionally the peak season for the smartphone industry, Lin told shareholders that he expected the company’s business to show improvement in the upcoming months.
However, sales growth in the second half would not be as strong as in the previous years, with vendors’ confidence in the market remaining weak and inventory adjustments in the supply chain continuing, he said.
Largan is to hold an investors’ conference on Thursday next week to share financial figures for last quarter and a business outlook for this quarter.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS