The world’s largest electronics manufacturing company and Apple’s main partner, Foxconn, raised its performance expectations for the fourth quarter of this year (October-December) on Tuesday (December 5th), citing strong sales during the year-end holiday season.
Typically, the fourth quarter is a peak sales season for many electronics manufacturing companies as they supply more smartphones, tablets, and other electronic products to major suppliers such as Apple to meet demand during the Western market’s year-end holidays.
In a statement, Foxconn stated that revenue in the first two months of the fourth quarter exceeded expectations slightly. Therefore, the outlook for the fourth quarter should be more promising than initially anticipated “significant growth” guidance.
However, Foxconn did not provide specific numerical guidance.
Last month, Foxconn reported strong YoY growth in consumer electronics revenue. The company announced that its November revenue reached NT$650 billion ($20.65 billion), an increase of 18% compared to last year and marking one of its highest monthly revenues in recent years.
This data represents the first improvement in monthly revenue YoY since January this year but is also due to a lower base from last year’s same period.
In terms of components and other products, November revenue also showed robust growth compared to last year due to increased configurations of smart consumer electronics products and higher shipments of automotive components.
Comparatively speaking, Foxconn’s October revenue was NT$741.2 billion ($23.52 billion), representing a MoM increase of 12.20% but a YoY decrease of 4.56%.
In November this year, Foxconn released its financial report for Q3 with unexpected profit growth.
According to their report, Q3 revenue was NT$1.54 trillion ($48.92 billion), down by 12% YoY due to weak demand for personal computers, cloud computing and network products along with high base figures from consumer electronic products; however, this still marked the second-highest quarterly revenue for the same period in recent years. The net profit for Q3 was NT$43.13 billion ($1.37 billion), an increase of 11% YoY.
According to analysts’ latest estimates, Foxconn’s sales in Q4 are expected to decline by 7.6% YoY and full-year sales for 2023 are projected to decrease by 7.5%.