Taiwan's LED packaging houses are forecast to have brighter business outlooks in the second half of the year than those of LED chip suppliers, according to local LED companies.
Lee Biing-jye, chairman of Taiwan's leading LED chip supplier Epistar Corp., told shareholders in a special general meeting last week that his company's capacity utilization rate for the current quarter is showing signs of declining from full utilization enjoyed in the previous quarter and will continue to fall in the fourth quarter.
Lee warned that Epistar's clients overbooked the company's LED products in the second quarter of the year, and after a peak in shipments in July, these customers have started to adjust their inventories, leading to a weak season starting in the third quarter.
Taiwanese LED chip packagers such as Unity Opto Technology Co. and Everlight Electronics Co., however, hold an opposite view and expect their revenues to climb in the second half of 2014 in light of the year-end U.S. holiday shopping season.
Opto said its current orders indicate strong customer demand for LED lighting and mobile phone LED backlight products, which will offset declining orders in the LED TV backlight segment.
The company has forecast record-high monthly or quarterly sales for the July-September quarter and expects to maintain this upbeat momentum into the fourth quarter.
Everlight Chairman Robert Yeh said his company is expected to generate record-high monthly sales in both August and September thanks to "pretty good" LED market demand in the second half of the year.