ASUSTeK - Record Quarterly Profits driven by Tablets

ASUSTeK just reported their highest quarterly profit in over four years, jumping 43% to $230 million from $160 million year ago.  This is in comparison to most of their tech competitors like Dell and HP who are consistently reporting losses and sale drops.  They credited their tablets, in particular the Nexus 7 and Transformer series for the increase.  As a Nexus 7 owner (plus iPad and iPhone owner), I was not surprised by this result at all as Asus has really been the only company aside from Samsung thats really innovating and creating great consumer tablets and smartdevices.

In fact, if you read my previous post and Marketwatch article on alternative ways to invest in the smartphone industry, I specifically called out the great results of the Nexus 7 and how it could cause a big jump in revenue and profits for its makers.  While I focused on nVidia and others because its difficult to invest in for US investors, Asus clearly stood to gain from it and which it has.

With Nexus 7 now becoming an even better deal with a drop in price and bump in specs, expect it to do well for the shopping season.

From the WSJ:

Asustek has been able to outperform its rivals thanks in part to its partnership with Google Inc. on the popular Nexus 7 tablet and strong demand for its "convertible" product, a tablet that comes with a detachable keyboard.

According to market-research firm Gartner, Asustek posted the third quarter's biggest rise in PC market share, to 7.3%, as its shipments rose 12%. H-P, Dell and Acer all reported lower shipments and market share for the period.

Asustek said in a statement its net profit for the three months ended Sept. 30 was 6.71 billion New Taiwan dollars (US$229.1 million), up 43% from the year-earlier NT$4.68 billion and exceeding the NT$5.41 billion average forecast of 16 analysts polled by FactSet.

...

Notebook PC shipments in the third quarter were up 14% from the second quarter, to five million units, while tablet shipments nearly tripled, to 2.3 million units from 800,000.

Asustek now expects its fourth-quarter notebook-PC shipments to be up 10% from the third quarter, to 5.5 million units, and tablet shipments to be up 13%, to 2.6 million units.