Taiwan LED Manufacturers Saw Substantial February Revenue Rise Due to Rush Orders for Replenishing Inventory

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According to survey by LEDinside, the total Feb 2009 revenue of listed Taiwan LED suppliers reached NTD 3.74billion, up 33% than Jan 2009 (YoY-25%), with the revenue of LED chip manufacturers at NTD 1.496 billion, up 46% and that of LED packaging manufacturers improved by 25% at NTD 2.243 billion comparing to January.

By observing the whole Taiwan LED chip industry, with the influx of rush orders, the Feb. revenue of NTD 1.496 billion has risen substantially comparing to last month (MoM+46%，YoY -31.3%). Taking the leading manufacturer Epistar for example, under the influence of rush orders from clients replenishing inventory, the bluelight utilization has surged tremendously and the Feb. revenue has reached NTD 0.689 billion(MoM+61%).

On the other hand, FOREPI has benefited from rush orders of medium and small-size panels with Feb. revenue of NTD 70 million(MoM+32%). Genesis Photonics also had its Feb. revenue rising back to NTD 60 million(MoM +70%) due to increasing orders in China mainland market.

Figure 1: ranking of LED Chip manufacturers in Feb. 09
 

As to downstream LED packaging section, the total February revenue has been 2.243 billion(MoM +26%，YoY-20%). With respect to single packaging manufacturer, the leading Everlight has obtained its Feb. revenue of around NTD 0.6 billion (MOM +13%), influenced by the overall demand increase of backlight. At the same time, due to rush orders from emulational mobile phones and low-price PCs, BRIGHT LED, Harvatek, Unity Opto for which sales of medium and small size having a large portion of the total revenue have seen a revenue rise of more than 20% comparing to January.

According to LED’ observation, among the manufacturers which have gained substantial month on month revenue growth in February,  Edison Opto and Ledtech had a MoM revenue rise of above 20% under the lasting demand increase in LED illumination field, while Light House Tech had a growth of 120%, benefiting from the penetration rate exaltation of LED NB.

Figure 2: ranking of LED packaging manufacturers in Feb. 09

 

In 2H Nov. 08, clients had all cut down their inventories in response to sharply dropping demand in terminal markets, while after the Lunar New Year, the inventories of many terminal clients had reached below the security level, and rush orders to replenish the inventories begin to rise up recently as a result. Besides, in the 2H 2008 some manufacturers had cut down prices in large scale to employ spare utilization, which had stimulated the brand NB and TV manufacturers to fasten their pace introducing LED backlight, thus caused the surge in the blue-light utilization for some upstream manufacturers.

Viewpoint of LEDinside

By observing the recent market situation, LEDinside suggests that orders of illumination products and medium/small size backlight are to be the chief demands supporting the LED industry for the time being. The continuously increasing demand of LED street lamp and business space illumination products has made LED illumination market full loaded with high power LED orders.

The demand of medium and small size backlight products is mostly brought out by the rush order effect for replenishing inventory, with the order visibility for most manufacturers being about 3 weeks, while some that have good technology capacity to enter the LED TV or LED NB supply chain have a order visibility of as long as more than 1 month. To look ahead, most of the manufacturers have said that the March revenue is expected to continue growing on the basis of February.