TAIPEI: Parade Technologies Ltd, a leading display and interface integrated circuit supplier, yesterday said sales this quarter would reach between US$47.5 million and US$54.5 million, compared with last quarter’s US$49.3 million and US$46.85 the previous year.
The company’s sales guidance for this quarter is in a range from falling 3 percent sequentially to increasing 10 percent from last quarter. The company said the guidance excludes any contribution from California-based Cypress Semiconductor Corp’s TrueTouch mobile touchscreen business.
The US$100 million acquisition — announced last month — is expected to be finalized by the end of this quarter, the company said at an investors’ conference.
Gross margin this quarter is expected to be between 40 and 43 percent, compared with last quarter’s 41.26 percent, the company said.
Parade is a major supplier of embedded DisplayPort (eDP) solutions for Apple Inc’s products, including the redesigned 12-inch MacBook, the 9.7-inch iPad 6, the iPad Mini 3 and the lower-cost iMac. Its products are also increasingly being used in non-Apple notebook computers and tablet devices.
The eDP technology enables graphics processors to better interface with display panels and helps save power and extend battery life. It is competing with the previous solution for embedded panel inputs based on low-voltage differential signal technology.
Parade in the second quarter generated net income of US$8.78 million, or earnings per share of NT$0.12, improving from the previous year’s US$8.09 million and US$0.11 per share.
Although the company’s second-quarter revenue grew 2.39 percent quarter-on-quarter and 5.24 percent year-on-year to US$49.3 million, Parade is conservative about the outlook for this quarter.
“We have observed a large gap between demand forecasts made by our panel clients and systems clients, with panel makers being the most conservative,” Parade chief executive Jack Zhao said.
Sales in the high season in the third quarter would not be as heated as previous years, Zhao said.
Growth momentum this quarter could be boosted by the growing adoption of new devices equipped with USB Type-C and Intel Corp’s upcoming Skylake chipset, he said.
Zhao said that the company’s eDP solutions currently have a 50 percent market share and that demand for eDP remains relatively unaffected amid the downturn in the consumer electronics sector.
While many of the company’s peers have been plagued by an inventory glut, Zhao said that current inventory levels remain healthy at the its vendors and its distribution channels.
