Mixed-signal IC and display chip supplier Parade Technologies Ltd (譜瑞) yesterday forecast its business operations this quarter would be flat from last quarter, as strong demand for PCs and laptops offset the effect of the traditional slow season for the electronics industry.
Nevertheless, the fabless semiconductor firm is upbeat for this year, with supply chain inventory adjustments having almost come to an end, and it plans to mass-produce several new products amid resumed demand from clients.
Neihu District (內湖), Taipei-based Parade offers mixed-signal ICs for high-speed interface applications in computers, consumer electronics and display panels. It also supplies embedded DisplayPort (eDP) chips for mobile devices.
Screengrab from the Web site of Parade Technologies Ltd
The company forecast revenue this quarter would reach between US$114 million and US$126 million, it said in a statement released after an online investors’ conference.
Compared with its revenue of US$120.13 million in the fourth quarter of last year, Parade’s revenue guidance for this quarter represents a sequential decline of 5.1 percent in the worst-case scenario or an increase of 4.89 percent in the best.
The company estimated its gross margin would reach between 43 percent and 47 percent this quarter, compared with 43.21 percent the previous quarter, the statement said.
Earnings per share last quarter were US$0.25, compared with US$0.18 a year earlier, it said.
Parade has turned positive on the PC industry’s outlook, expecting notebook computer clients’ pull-in orders to be sustained this year, coupled with a wave of replacement demand.
“Order momentum in the second half of this year would be better than in the first half,” Parade cofounder and CEO Jack Zhao (趙捷) said.
Zhao said the company would begin mass production of both USB4 retimer chips for PCs and PCIe Gen5 retimer chips for servers this year, while its existing timing controllers for tablets with AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screens have gained orders from several new clients.
With stable demand from new clients and easing inventory pressure, the company expects revenue and earnings to resume growth this year after a slump last year.
Last year, Parade’s revenue fell 35.1 percent to US$441.25 million, the lowest in four years, from US$679.92 million in the prior year, while net profit dropped to US$64.97 million, the worst in five years, from US$167.25 million, the company said.
Earnings per share were US$0.82 last year, down from US$2.09 in the prior year, with gross margin declining 2.8 percentage points to 43.7 percent, it said.
Zhao said that keeping the gross margin stabilized would be a very important task for the company this year.
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