Largan Precision Co (大立光), a major camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones, yesterday said net profit last quarter spiked about 60 percent sequentially thanks to a pickup in demand for new premium smartphones, and the positive momentum would carry through next month.
Net profit surged to NT$5.95 billion (US$185.21 million) in the July-to-September quarter, compared with NT$3.7 billion in the previous quarter, Largan said.
However, on an annual basis, net profit sank about 27 percent from NT$8.14 billion as wobbling economic growth and high inflation dampened demand for upscale smartphones, the company said.
Photo: David Chang, EPA-EFE
The Taichung-based company said earnings per share last quarter jumped to NT$49.6 from NT$27.69 a quarter earlier, but declined from NT$61.01 in the third quarter of last year.
“Demand for high-end smartphones improved a bit,” Largan chairman and CEO Adam Lin (林恩平) told an online investors’ conference yesterday.
He said the market is not as pessimistic as before, though it has not turned totally optimistic.
With high-end smartphone demand gradually catching up, multiple clients are adding new orders for camera lenses, Lin said.
That bodes well for the company’s revenue, which he said would likely increase this month and next month.
Largan should benefit from strong sales of Apple’s iPhone 15 series and Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) Mate 60 smartphones, TF International Securities Group Co (天風國際證券) analyst Kuo Ming-chi (郭明錤) said last week.
As firms in the smartphone supply chain continue to deal with inventory issues, both phone vendors and component suppliers are seeing their inventories return to healthy levels, Largan said.
However, the company’s gross margin last quarter, dipped to 42.6 percent, hitting the lowest in about a decade, compared with 49.32 percent in the second quarter and 49.34 percent in the third quarter last year. Largan blamed the fall on lower yields and larger price cuts on existing camera lenses.
Last quarter could be the trough as Largan is striving to boost yields rate for its new periscope lens production, while there is scant room for further price cuts, Lin said.
As the demand in smartphone sector has been low for a while, Largan has put off the construction of a new factory in Taichung, the company said.
The construction of the new NT$20 billion factory is to be completed next month, a delay from the company’s original schedule in the first quarter. Largan is in no rush to operate the new factory, given current market demand, Lin said.
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