FIGHTING PRICE PRESSURES: The company’s chairman said revenue from panels that are used in cars is expected to increase by a double-digit percentage this year
Taipei Times
Date: Jun 18, 2018
By: Lisa Wang / Staff reporter
AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the nation’s second-largest LCD panel maker,
AU Optronics chairman Paul Peng, left, and company president Michael Tsai give the thumbs-up after the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Taichung on Friday.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
expects the downward pressure on prices of LCD TV panels to ease in the second half of this year, thanks to improving inventories and rising demand ahead of the peak season.
Since the beginning of this year, prices for TV panels, such as 32-inch and 40-inch screens, have dropped more than 20 percent, as TV vendors continued to scale down orders to level off their excessive stockpiles, the company said.
“It is unlikely that panel prices will hover at below-cost levels for a long period. The market will balance out eventually,” AUO chairman Paul Peng (彭雙浪) told a media briefing after the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Taichung on Friday last week.
As the LCD TV market is to enter its peak season in the third and fourth quarters, price declines should slow and the price of certain types of panels might even pick up, Peng said.
The ongoing FIFA World Cup would help stimulate TV sales, while most TV vendors are close to reducing their panel inventories to healthy levels, he said.
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