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ARLINGTON, VA -- "The worldwide components market appears to be steadying and poised for modest growth beginning in the fall/early winter time frame."
MANKATO, MN -- Winland Electronics reported second-quarter net sales of $5.7 million, down 16.5% from last year.
BILLINGSTAD, NORWAY -- Kitron today reported second-quarter revenue fell 25.4% from last year to NOK 427 million ($70 million) on weaker defense and industrial sales.
TAIPEI -- Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai) today reported July revenues fell 1.62% year-over-year to NT$128.16 billion ($3.91 billion).
BANNOCKBURN, IL -- The industry continues to do battle over a proposed standard governing limits of chlorine and bromine in electronics assemblies, with opponents continuing to vote against publishing the pending document until verifiable test methods are developed.
OXFORDSHIRE, UK – The Smart Group has finalized the program for its 25th Anniversary Seminar, to be held here Oct. 22.
Two speakers from Rockwell Collins will present the keynote, titled Manufacturing Wrong: Case Studies in Non Conformance.
Other presentations cover reliability, business and environment issues.
For more information, visit http://www.smartgroup.org/images/stories/events/25thAnniversarySeminar.pdf.
LUXEMBOURG -- Elcoteq today said it would lay off about 18% -- some 700 workers -- of its staff at its manufacturing unit in Pecs, Hungary, in response to falling demand.
DUSSELDORF – Today Henkel reported second-quarter sales fell 5% year-over-year to 3.49 billion euros.
Adjusted operating profit decreased 17.2% to 308 million euros. Net earnings for the quarter rose 257%, to 150 million euros.
Organic sales in the adhesive technologies business sector declined 15.4% year-over-year, but improved compared to the first quarter. Laundry and home care and cosmetics/toiletries had organic growth rates of 6.3% and 3.5%, respectively.
“Again in the second quarter of 2009, Henkel felt the effects of the continuing world economic recession,” said Kasper Rorsted, chairman of the Henkel management board. “Our laundry and home care business sector actually surpassed the good results of the first quarter, while cosmetics/toiletries again showed a very positive performance. Compared to the first quarter, we also registered an improvement at adhesive technologies.”
Henkel expects the difficult market conditions will persist through 2009. For the third quarter, the firm expects its consumer businesses to continue to perform well, with a degree of deceleration. The company expects the adhesive technologies business will develop similarly or slightly better than the second quarter. The firm’s outlook for the fourth quarter is unclear.
1 euro = US $1.4168
According to Barron's, inventory at OEM and EMS companies fell 10 days sequentially in the second quarter.
The financial publication reported combined inventories dropped to 77 days, based on data from major communications companies like Cisco and their suppliers.
AUSTIN – Large-area (10" and larger) TFT LCD shipments reached 130 million units in the second quarter, up 10% year-over-year and 42% sequentially, says DisplaySearch.
Because of the increase in prices, large-area TFT LCD revenues of $15 billion grew 51% sequentially, but were still down 29% compared to the second quarter last year.
Strong market demand in the quarter led to a recovery in capacity utilization across all applications, says the research firm.
Also, panel makers are increasing capacity utilization to respond to growing demand and targeting third-quarter shipments of large-area TFT LCD panels of 152.8 million, up 18% compared to the second quarter. If panel makers reach their unit shipment targets, revenue growth is expected to be 32%, says DisplaySearch.
In the second quarter, Samsung Electronics led in large-area TFT LCD panel revenues, with sales of $4.2 billion, a 27.8% revenue share. LG Display was second, with $3.7 billion in revenues and a 25% sales share. AUO was third at $2.3 billion, with a 15.7% share, with CMO closely behind at 15.3% share.
LG Display took first place in unit shipments, but Samsung shipped the most by area, says DisplaySearch.
On a unit basis, Korea was the largest supplier of large-area TFT LCD panels with a 49.8% share, but was down from 52.2% in the first quarter because of strong shipment growth of Taiwanese panel suppliers. Taiwan's share increased from 38.4% in the previous period to 41.2% in this quarter.
"We are forecasting that industry utilization will be 87% in the third quarter, due to growing orders. In the second quarter, the industry experienced a strong recovery, and shipments reached record highs. We expect that strong demand will push panel shipments to another record high in the third quarter. However, strong panel shipments in some cases are due to downstream players piling up inventory, so we believe it will be necessary to watch the supply chain inventory situation closely at the end of the third quarter," said David Hsieh, vice president of DisplaySearch.
