Electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industries beat expectations for profits in the third quarter when new products that it assembles, including Apple’s new iPhones, began to hit the market.
The company, better known as Foxconn, has been fighting to improve its profitability amid rising labour costs in China, where it runs most of its factories, and weak sales of some electronic devices.
Net sales rose 5.1 per cent to T$919.3bn ($31bn) in the third quarter, and net profit hit T$30.7bn ($1bn), better than the T$25.99 predicted by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. The company’s gross margin in particular beat expectations, although it slid from 7.53 per cent to 7.07 per cent, said Vincent Chen, an analyst with Yuanta Securities in Taipei.