Machinery maker Hiwin Technologies Co (上銀科技) forecast business would resume growth from next year after posting flat revenue growth this year, as market demand showed signs of recovery, company chairman Chuo Wen-heng (卓文恒) said yesterday.
The company saw a marked improvement in the number of visitors to the Japan International Machine Tool Fair last week and the order visibility for some Japanese machine tool makers has slightly improved compared with the previous year, Chuo told an earnings conference in Taipei.
Chuo said he had observed a relatively optimistic sentiment for the machine tool industry this year, as exhibitor attendance at the trade show seemed to be back to pre-COVID-19-pandemic levels.
Photo: Lin Jin-hua, Taipei Times
He also has a positive outlook for the US market after the US presidential election last week, as the US Federal Reserve is likely to continue its interest rate cuts, which is expected to support market demand and result in more orders for machine tool makers, he said.
Chuo said he also sees signs of improvement in the domestic market, based on the latest machine tool export data and feedback from members of trade associations.
Several machine tool makers have shifted focus to high-end product development and gradually produced components used in end applications such as semiconductor equipment, he said.
Hopefully, next year would be better than this year for Taiwan’s machine tool industry, he added.
However, the European market has slowed, with the German machine tool market particularly under pressure as the country’s automobile industry takes a hit from Chinese electric vehicles, Chuo said.
Meanwhile, the Chinese market is recovering, but visibility remains unclear, depending on the US tariff policy of US president-elect Donald Trump, he said.
In China, which contributes about 40 to 45 percent to Hiwin’s sales, order visibility is about two to 2.5 months, mainly for rush orders, he said.
While the company’s shipments to China remain steady from month to month, it is difficult to see order visibility as far out as six to eight months, he added.
Hiwin — which supplies linear guideways, ball screws, bearings and industrial robots — yesterday posted its best profit in eight quarters as its revenue continued to improve.
Net profit was NT$664 million (US$20.48 million) in the third quarter, up 14 percent quarter-on-quarter and 5 percent year-on-year, while earnings per share was NT$1.88, the highest since the third quarter of 2022, the company said.
Revenue last quarter was the highest in four quarters at NT$6.33 billion, it said.
In the first three quarters, net profit decreased 3.5 percent year-on-year to NT$1.64 billion, or earnings per share of NT$4.64, while total revenue fell 4.5 percent to NT$18.02 billion, it added.
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