Apple supplier Foxconn records 5% rise in Q3 profit, sees flattish Q4 - Yahoo! Voices

By Ben Blanchard and Sarah Wu

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Apple Inc supplier and iPhone assembler Foxconn said connected Thursday it expected flattish gross successful the 4th quarter, arsenic the institution grapples with COVID-19 curbs astatine a large mill successful China's Zhengzhou concern hub.

Apple expects little shipments of its high-end iPhone 14 models than antecedently anticipated pursuing a important accumulation chopped astatine the virus-blighted works successful China, dampening its income outlook for the year-end vacation season.

The Taiwanese company, the world's largest declaration electronics shaper which is formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, said nett net for the July-September 4th roseate 5% to T$38.8 cardinal from T$36.98 cardinal a twelvemonth earlier.

Eleven analysts were expecting connected mean nett of T$41.3 billion, according to Refinitiv.

Reuters past period reported that Foxconn's accumulation of Apple's iPhones astatine the Zhengzhou mill could slump by arsenic overmuch arsenic 30% successful November owed to choky COVID-19 restrictions.

Foxconn's main Zhengzhou mill successful cardinal China, which employs astir 200,000 radical and is the world's largest iPhone plant, has been rocked by discontent implicit stringent measures to curb the dispersed of COVID-19, with galore workers fleeing the site.

Apple, which launched income of the caller iPhones successful September, said customers volition acquisition longer hold times to person their caller products.

Foxconn said connected Monday it was moving to resume afloat accumulation astatine the works arsenic soon arsenic possible. On Wednesday it said it would proceed accumulation successful Zhengzhou nether a "closed loop" system, wherever unit unrecorded and enactment on-site successful a bubble isolated from the wider world..

Foxconn is Apple's biggest iPhone maker, accounting for 70% of iPhone shipments globally. It has different smaller accumulation sites successful India and confederate China.

Having said connected Monday it would "revise down" its 4th fourth outlook fixed the concern successful Zhengzhou, Foxconn said gross successful the last 3 months of this twelvemonth would beryllium flattish.

It did not supply a numerical outlook.

The 4th fourth is traditionally the blistery play for Taiwan's tech companies arsenic they contention to proviso cellphones, tablets and different electronics for the engaged year-end vacation play successful Western markets.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Sarah Wu; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Christopher Cushing)