by Anton Shilov
11/05/2002 | 04:08 PM
Numerous Taiwanese mainboard manufacturers reported their financial results for the third quarter of 2002. The “Big Four” got the leadership positions again. Though, the “Big Four” can soon transform into the “Big Three” since the fourth company, Gigabyte Technology, received more than two times lower revenue compared to the closest rival, MicroStar International and there are a lot of competitors for Gigabyte’s market share.
Here is the full table, taken from DigiTimes, Taiwan web-site. Some figures may be unconfirmed by the vendors.
| Financial Results of Taiwanese Mainboard Manufacturers in the Third Quarter 2002 | ||||||||
| Revenue ($ Million) | Gross Margin (%) | Pre-tax Profits ($ Million) | Net Profits ($ Million) | EPS ($) | ||||
| Q3 | Q1-Q3 | Q2 | Q3 | Q1-Q3 | Q1-Q3 | Q1-Q3 | Q1-Q3 | |
| ASUSTeK | $626.27 | $1741.00 | 15.20% | 13.08% | 14.87% | $219.48 | $199.63 | $0.10 |
| ECS | $458.45 | $1370.39 | 8.40% | 8.30% | 9.10% | $70.53 | $54.62 | $0.13 |
| MSI | $413.96 | $1159.54 | 13.00% | 11.70% | 12.50% | $75.42 | $66.24 | $0.12 |
| Gigabyte | $206.16 | $594.45 | 11.60% | 15.27% | 15.94% | $61.04 | $55.08 | $0.10 |
| USI | $189.50 | $594.71 | 7.78% | 7.14% | 7.84% | $6.73 | $7.25 | $0.01 |
| ABIT | $54.01 | $147.71 | 5.91% | 0.62% | 6.24% | - $18.36 | - $15.37 | - $0.05 |
| Chaintech | $40.63 | $106.96 | 3.0% | 8.47% | 7.73% | - $7.63 | - $6.71 | - $0.06 |
| Shuttle | $38.27 | $105.87 | 14.59% | 13.2% | 14.42% | $7.48 | $5.58 | $0.04 |
| Biostar | $32.81 | $97.84 | 7.50% | 9.00% | 9.60% | $2.31 | $2.56 | $0.03 |
| EPoX | $25.73 | $80.26 | 7.83% | 6.74% | 8.58% | - $3.48 | - $3.60 | - $0.05 |
| DFI | $24.95 | $79.48 | 12.44% | 8.93% | 11.29% | $1.67 | $1.76 | $0.01 |
| Albatron | $24.78 | $33.96 | 8.0% | 4.5% | 10.48% | - $1.61 | - $1.12 | - $0.03 |
| Jetway | $24.23 | $69.24 | 11.00% | 12.50% | 12.90% | $4.0 | $3.08 | $0.07 |
| Acorp | $14.76 | $33.73 | - 3.58% | - 4.30% | - 2.46% | - $3.40 | - $2.82 | - $0.06 |
| SOYO | $6.88 | $36.55 | 13.36% | 11.55% | 13.57% | - $1.24 | - $1.32 | - $0.01 |
ASUSTeK this year remains in the clearly leading position among all mainboard manufacturers, who report their sales results to observers. With its Hua Ching subsidiary, ASUSTeK has all the chances to outperform the closest competitors even more significantly. ECS continues to remain being a strong player, however, MSI is very close and, keeping in mind that it makes a lot of components for the world’s leading vendors of personal computers, this company may soon leave ECS behind.
Gigabyte Technology this year is not very aggressive at all and that is why they cannot boast with adequate financial results compared to the rivals from the “Big Four”. The only consolation for them is improved profit margin, however, I do not think that with market share decreasing this figure can influence the average state of this company positively.
USI, also known as Universal Scientific Industrial Co., is a contract manufacturer of SMT board assembly related products who have a lot of subsidiaries all around the world. They have low gross margins and only started to report their financial results very recently. Basically, I have no idea if they come to the mainboard market to stay. Tomorrow they may begin to produce cellular phones or set-top boxes instead of computer components and they will not be presented in the list anymore. However, this year they have been as successful as Gigabyte has been so far – not bad for the start, isn’t it?
ABIT tries to extend its market share these days. Well, their revenue is quite high, however, gross margin decreased significantly in the third quarter. Chaintech, the closest rival for ABIT can boast with higher profit margins, however, their revenues are substantially lower compared to ABIT’s.
The remaining companies showed rather ordinary results in the third quarter. The exception is Acorp: they have been loosing money this year and its unlikely that the situation will improve in the near future for them. Basically, ABIT, Chaintech, EPoX, Albatron, Acorp and SOYO are unprofitable, nevertheless, I have no doubt that the state of the first two, as well as Albatron will become better soon, but I am not so sure about the other three, keeping in mind their product positioning and manufacturing capabilities.
In general, all the companies dealing with computer hardware suffer from lowering profit margins these days and some manufacturers already cut their revenue estimates for the year 2002, seeing that the demand will not improve gradually this year. In spite of the numerous rumours about the possible merges between different companies in the industry, none of them is confirmed, however, I think it is quite logical for small mainboard makers to combine their efforts in order to survive.
All the manufacturers of PC components now hope that their lives will be better in 2003, when the market will recover. They are right: if you buy their products, their lives will be better :-)