Largan Precision said Saturday its August consolidated sales were NT$5.01 billion, down 16 percent from a year earlier and up 3 percent from July. [1] The Apple camera-lens supplier printed that number in the same Central News Agency dump that gave Hon Hai a record August. [1] The AI assembler is up. The iPhone lens name is still down year over year. Hindu BusinessLine converted the same August print to $158.01 million and repeated the 16 percent drop. [2] Conversion is not a second primary. The Taiwan-dollar table is the receipt.
Focus Taiwan put the mix in the same item. Lenses of 20 megapixels and higher, which carry higher margins, accounted for 10 to 20 percent of August sales. Lenses of 10 to 20 megapixels made up 60 to 70 percent. Eight-megapixel lenses were less than 10 percent. Other products were 20 to 30 percent. [1] The high-margin slice is still a minority of the tray. January through August sales were up 4 percent from a year earlier. [1] [2] Eight months can be up 4 percent while the latest month is down 16. That is a mix shift and a calendar, not a recovery.
Largan said traditional peak-season effects should lift September as clients build inventory ahead of new-product debuts. [1] [2] Peak-season rebuild is a forecast. It is not August. Do not write a product delay. Launch remains a September event on the industry calendar. Largan's August print does not wait for it. Hindu BusinessLine repeated the September rebuild in the same ANI write-through that led on Foxconn's $29.14 billion. [2] That is how the drop gets buried: as the last sentence of an AI-sales story.
Hon Hai, in the same item, said cloud and networking posted significant month-on-month growth while smart consumer electronics and computing declined from July. [1] Foxconn's record August is a server story wearing an electronics-giant name. Largan's name is still a camera-lens name. One table, two directions. MSM will lead the dump on Hon Hai's 52 percent year-on-year jump and leave NT$5.01 billion in a trailing paragraph. [1] [2]
The split is the story that paragraph buries. Hon Hai's August was NT$921.77 billion, up 51.98 percent year on year, the second month above NT$900 billion, still short of July's NT$946.51 billion. [1] Largan's August was NT$5.01 billion, down 16 percent year on year, up 3 percent from July. [1] [2] One name prints a record August on AI servers. The other prints a lens tray that is still smaller than last August. Foxconn's cloud and networking floor is running hot enough to post a second month above NT$900 billion. [1] Largan's tray is still 16 percent below last August with a September rebuild still ahead. Launch week is not a shipment week. A year-on-year drop into that week is the line the Hon Hai headline does not carry.
-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco