Taiwan's Chimei posts $450 mn loss in Q2

Taiwan's Chimei Innolux Corp, a leading flat screen maker, said Thursday it posted more than $450 million in losses in the three months to June, in a sign of the woes hitting the industry globally. The company, affiliated with Taiwan's tech giant Hon Hai Precision, said its loss in the second quarter of Tw$13.01 billion ($451.8 million) was due to weak global demand and falling prices. Although the figure was slightly lower than a Tw$13.8 billion loss seen in the first quarter, it was wider than expected, analysts said. "I had previously forecast a loss of around Tw$10 billion for the company. This was a surprise," Wayne Lin of Concord Securities told AFP. The hardest hit was a six-percent decline in the average selling prices of large liquid crystal display panels, which are used in TV sets, notebooks and monitors and account for 80 percent of the company's revenues, he said. The selling prices of small panels fell an average of 13 percent the three months, he said. The worse-than-expected performance reflected problems also afflicting Chimei's competitors, and analysts said the odds of the sector regaining momentum during the coming quarter was low. "The demand was weak as its major export markets like the United States and Europe struggled in the face of a severe slowdown," Lin said. Another leading Taiwanese flat-screen maker AU Optronics Corp said last week that it posted a net loss of Tw$10.77 billion in the second quarter, the third consecutive quarterly loss for the company.