TAIPEI: Pegatron Corp’s quarterly sales dropped by 20.41 percent to NT$218.66 billion (US$7 billion) last quarter, affected by weaker-than-expected notebook computer demand and weak sales of its communications products during the slow season.
However, the figure was 2.74 percent higher than a year ago, when sales totaled NT$212.82 billion, according to the firm’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
“We missed our notebook shipment target last quarter due to weak demand in the PC industry,” an investor relations official at Pegatron, who declined to be named, said by telephone yesterday.
Pegatron shipped 2.2 million notebook computers last quarter, up 4.76 percent from the previous quarter, the official said.
The company in May told investors that it expected notebook PC shipments to grow by between 15 and 20 percent to between 2.41 million and 2.52 million units from the first quarter’s 2.1 million units.
Last quarter’s shipments were not only lower than the company’s guidance, but also represented a 12 percent decrease from the 2.5 million units sold in the same period last year, the official said.
“This year’s notebook demand appears softer than Pegatron’s expectations,” the official said.
The company’s communications and consumer electronics businesses also fared poorly last quarter, with revenue from the two segments plunging more than 30 percent last quarter from the prior quarter.
Sales of communications and consumer electronics products contributed about 75 percent to Pegatron’s total revenue in the first quarter, the official said.
As the product cycle of major clients’ smartphone models gradually concludes, the scale of the decline in sales from the communications segment was within Pegatron’s expectation, the official said.
Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng told investors that business for last quarter would be the trough of the year, as many of its clients were going through product transitions.
Chairman Tung Tsu-hsien expects revenue to rebound this quarter. He told shareholders on June 15 that company engineers were busy preparing for the upcoming peak season.
Pegatron is recruiting a large number of workers in China ahead of the peak season, the official said.
“It is normal to recruit tens of thousands workers during peak season,” she said, declining to offer precise recruitment numbers.
While the company expects the performance of communications and consumer electronics product segments to rebound this quarter on the back of growing orders from clients, order visibility in the notebook PC segment remains unclear, the official said.
Pegatron shares closed at NT$87.3 in Thursday’s trading, up by 1.63 percent from the previous day.
