Electronics manufacturer Qisda Corp (佳世達) yesterday said revenue performance in the second half of the year would be flat from the first half, as third-quarter sales came in lower than expected amid weak demand for information technology (IT) products and networking and communication devices.
The company expects its high valued-added businesses — including hospital operations, medical products, smart business solutions and networking and communications products — to provide stable support to its revenue this quarter, with demand for IT products, mainly monitors and projectors, slowly picking up, it said in a presentation document released following the company’s earnings conference.
The company remains confident that profit performance in the second half of the year would be better than the first half, Qisda chairman Peter Chen (陳其宏) said, citing continued improvement in gross margin.
Photo: Fang Wei-chieh, Taipei Times
Gross margin, a key profitability gauge, increased 2.2 percentage points year-on-year to 16.6 percent in the July-to-September quarter, and rose 2.3 percentage points to 16.3 percent in the first three quarters of the year, both the highest in 20 years, which Chen attributed to contributions from high value-added products and services.
“After revenue from high value-added businesses accounted for more than half of the top line last year, the company’s next goal is to see those businesses contribute more than half of the bottom line by 2027,” he said.
As for next year, Chen said the visibility of the industry remains unclear, given factors such as the war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and sticky inflation worldwide. As a result, the company is to hold a cautiously optimistic view about its revenue and earnings outlook next year, he said.
The company’s consolidated revenue last quarter decreased 3.34 percent quarter-on-quarter and was down 16.13 percent year-on-year to NT$50.37 billion (US$1.56 billion) due to slower-than-expected recovery in monitor shipments and delayed delivery of networking and communications devices such as Internet protocol cameras, routers and switches.
Net profit grew 17.3 percent quarterly to NT$1.2 billion, which translated into earnings per share of NT$0.61, due to an increase in non-operating gains. But net profit still fell 81.1 percent annually, the company said.
In the first three quarters, revenue dropped 16.76 percent year-on-year to NT$152.93 billion and net profit decreased 67.67 percent to NT$2.55 billion, with earnings per share of NT$1.3, it said.
The IT business accounts for 43 percent of the company’s overall revenue in the first three quarters, followed by smart business solutions at 16 percent, networking and communications segment at 14 percent, medical business at 12 percent, high value-added services at 8 percent and 7 percent for other products, the company said.
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