Source: Digitimes news
Passive component company Yageo has expressed caution about its sales performance in the fourth quarter of 2018, citing a slowdown in demand from its customers based in the Greater China region.
Yageo continued that seasonal factors and the ongoing US-China trade disputes have discouraged its customers in Greater China from ramping up their orders. Meanwhile, several of its clients in the region are engaged in inventory correction and have therefore slowed down their pace of orders, the maker of MLCCs and chip resistors said.
Yageo also disclosed consolidated revenues of NT$10.25 billion (US$331.3 million) for September 2018, down 3.3% sequentially but up 241.6% on year. The company credited the robust on-year growth to recognized sales generated by BrightKing, in which it acquired a majority stake earlier this year.
Fellow company Walsin Technology has reported consolidated revenues of NT$6.29 billion for September 2018, up 2.2% on month and hitting a record high. The company expects to post a sequential decrease in fourth-quarter revenues, due partly to the impact of the US-China trade war.
Yageo and Walsin both have about 80% of their clients based in China, according to industry sources.
In other news, Murata’s planned suspension of several conventional MLCC lines will likely result in the overall MLCC supply shortfall estimated at about 30 billion units monthly after March 2019, the sources indicated. Both Yageo and Walsin plan to expand their conventional MLCC capacities to fill the shortfall, the sources said.
In the entry-level and mid-range MLCC segment, Yageo plans to grow production capacity to 50 billion MLCCs monthly at the end of 2018 and further to 60 billion units a year later, the sources observed. Meanwhile, Walsin will expand its MLCC production capacity by 20% in 2018, and continue building additional new capacity in 2019.