LED Orders for LED TVs Tightening Supply for Other Applications; Ultra High Brightness LED Chips in Short Supply

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According to the industry research institute LEDinside, total revenue of Taiwan’s listed LED manufacturers in April, 2009 was NT$5.361 billion, growing by 9.1% (YoY -13.4%) comparing with March, 2009. The total April revenue of LED chip manufacturers was NT$2.089 billion, up by 4.4％ than a month earlier; and the revenue for LED packagers was NT$3.27 billion, growing by 12.4％comparing with March.

From recent market situation, the current order visibility is no longer than 2 to 4 weeks. For the upstream LED chip part, with Samsung actively stocking up for LED TVs, the ultra-bright blue light LED supply begins to shows signals of strain. As a result, LED backlight supply for Notebooks has been tightened and orders for comparatively low-end cell phone backlights begin to flow to the second-line manufacturers. As to the downstream packaging part, the recent growing momentum is mainly attributed to small- and medium- sized LED backlight and lighting LEDs. Though some manufacturers expect the revenue in May to continue rising, the order visibility after June is still not clear for the time being. The false demand of double booking should be looked out for despite the recent strong market demand.

The total revenue of Taiwan’s LED chip makers was NT$2.089 billion, growing slightly comparing with last month (MoM+4.4%，YoY -25.7%). The leading manufacturer Epistar had an April revenue of NT$980 million. With its capacity close to full-loaded, the growing momentum in revenue is slowing down for the company. Thanks to orders from LED TVs, the blue light LED capacity utilization of FOREPI also rallied to around 90 per cent, and the April revenue was NT$137 million(MoM+15%). Tekcore had its April revenue of NT$ 98million due to increasing high brightness LED output.

Figure 1: Operating revenue ranking of LED chipmakers in April, 2009

As to the downstream LED packaging part, the total revenue in April was NT$ 3.27billion(MoM +12.4%，YoY-3.1%), with the output value already close to the level of the same period last year. The leading packager Everlight had an April revenue of NT$ 926 million (MOM +15%), thanks to overall rewarming in backlight demand. Harvatek and Unity Opto, for which medium and small size backlight sales contributing a large part of the total revenue, both saw April revenue rising by 12-30% comparing with March. Due to continuously increasing freezing lighting bar orders, Ledtech had its April revenue rising back to NT$115million (MoM+28%). And Edison, a manufacturer specialized in lighting field, had its high power LED revenue making up around 60-70% of the total April revenue which grew by 9.4% than last month, or 19% comparing with the same period last year.

Figure 2: Operating revenue ranking of LED packagers in April, 2009