King Yuan Electronics (KYEC) has expressed concerns that it may experience a particularly weak second quarter of 2011, as clients turn cautious about placing orders due to shortages of some raw materials used to make semiconductors.
The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan has had a negative impact on the global IC industry supply chain, as key providers of manufacturing components and materials are mostly Japan-based and see their supplies constrained.
Orders for LCD driver ICs and handset solutions have been affected as clients now face longer lead times for upstream materials produced by Japan-based suppliers, KYEC indicated.
In addition, GPU clients have slowed down their pace of orders as they are about to complete shipments for iPad-like devices, KYEC said.
Judging from the present order visibility, KYEC may report a single-digit growth in revenues for the second quarter of 2011 compared to double-digit increases usually seen for the same quarter in previous years, the company noted.
KYEC posted NT$975 million (US$33.7 million) in March 2011 revenues, down 17.4% on year. Revenues from January through March totaled NT$2.98 billion, slipping 10.9% from the same period of 2010.