Taiwan exports rose 18.1% year-on-year in January to US$37.19 billion powered by exports of electronic components related to AI, including chips, officials reportedly said, noting it was the 3rd straight month of year-on-year growth and the best increase in 21-months, media report. Electronic component exports rose 7.5% to $13.67 billion, ending 14 straight monthly declines.

TSMC's revenue in January rose 7.9% year-on-year to NT$215.79 billion, also up 22.4% versus December, TSMC reported.

The more I shout, the more it drops.
Maybe it's doing CNY sales.
Maybe I'm so wrong.
Maybe the upcoming QR is awful.
Maybe...
Let's focus on the fundamental rather than the stock price movement...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2024/01/30/c4q-2023-hard-disk-drive-industry-update/?sh=ec6967458aeb

https://twitter.com/thomascoughlin/status/1752361405955911717

WDC earnings transcript:
Turning to HDD. The sequential revenue increase was driven by improving nearline demand and pricing. Moreover, we are encouraged by demand in China with revenue doubling on a sequential and year-over-year basis, both of which were ahead of our expectations. We anticipate year-over-year growth in HDD throughout this calendar year.
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At the end of the fiscal second quarter, cash and cash equivalents were 2.5 billion and total liquidity was 4.7 billion, including the undrawn revolver capacity of 2.25 billion. For the fiscal third quarter, our non-GAAP guidance is as follows: We expect revenue to be in the range of 3.2 billion to 3.4 billion. We expect sequential revenue growth to be mainly driven by an increase in HDD. We anticipate flash revenue to be up slightly as we remain focused on optimizing bit shipments and ASP.

Seagate transcript:
We enter calendar 2024 with increased confidence in our non-GAAP gross margin trajectory, including our ability to reclaim 30% minimum benchmark level at quarterly revenues that are at least 20% below our prior cyclical peak. From a demand standpoint, gradual recovery within the U.S. cloud market has started to take shape, reflecting solid progress in consuming excess inventory, along with more stable end-market behavior. Enterprise OEM demand trends have also stabilized within the U.S. markets. Customer feedback still points to macro-related concerns, although IT hardware budgets are projected to modestly improve in calendar 2024, and traditional server growth is expected to resume trends that support incremental HDD demand growth in the calendar year.

We were also encouraged to see incremental demand among certain non-U.S. cloud and enterprise customers in the December quarter. Across the broader China markets, we project a relatively slower pace of recovery given the ongoing economic challenges within the region. However, some local governments announced further steps to support the region's economy, which our customers believe will bolster local demand across mass capacity markets in China in the second half of the calendar year.

https://blocksandfiles.com/2024/01/26/western-digitals-second-successive-growth-quarter-seagate-hamr-no-threat/

https://blocksandfiles.com/2024/01/25/seagates-revenue-recovery-underway/

All signs are showing better demand and prospect for large capacity HDD...

https://blocksandfiles.com/2023/12/15/toshiba-exec-hdds-have-a-bright-future/

Toshiba executive said large capacity HDD has bright future...

Although their spacer ring division will not be growing as they used to be... Their next growth leg will be coming from metal stamping and fabrication division... They invested a lot in China... Dufusion bought a land at Bukit Minyak for future expansion... They are moving the profits from HDD to other divisions...

Both WD and Seagate are guiding better Q2 results, primary driven by HDD demand...
I am quite certain that Dufu will deliver a better than expected result in Q4'23, and a better prospects guidance...

Seagate HAMR Moziac disk will not treaten Western Digital nor Toshiba nearline HDD... UltraSMR will continue to win market share... This is because CSPs are not asking for certain technology, but looking forward to products that can deliver the best TCO.
There will be 1 million HAMR HDD to be shipped in this first half... 30TB HAMR has 10 disks... 10 disks with 9 ring spacers...

Being a contra investor requires a lot of patience and conviction to see the thesis to be played out.
The market is being quite ignorant to the fact that nearline HDD demand is on uptrend again... They underestimate the demand for large capacity HDD due to AI introduction...

I made a mistake in the previous thread where I said Q4'23 is definitely a QoQ and YoY growth.
The answer is I don't know and was being ego to say something like this.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2024/01/30/c4q-2023-hard-disk-drive-industry-update/?sh=620ecca758ae

The recession for HDD was bottomed in Q3'23 and the recovery started in Q4'23.
The amount of HDD shipments does not matter to Dufu since it is a niche player which benefits the most when the exabyte shipped increases.

Q4'23 for Dufu is definitely a QoQ and YoY growth.
The downside is capped... Let's see how the market will react to this.
The short term fluctuation is a cost that investors will need to pay if he wants to enjoy the upside.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-ramping-32tb-hamr-hdd-in-q1-40tb-hdds-in-2025

Seagate is ramping up for their 30TB HAMR HDD.

Both Seagate and Western digital guided sequential recovery for their HDD businesses.
Coupled with TSMC strong guidance this year, Dufu is a gem waiting to be discovered.

Capacity shipped by WD and Seagate are on uptrend again...

Seagate:
65.1EB Q4'23 compared to 56EB Q3'23 for nearline HDD
11.9TB Q4'23 compared to 10.3TB Q3'23 average capacity for mass capacity drive

WD:
Exabyte shipments: increased 14% QoQ

The downside is minimal.

Cheap stock with great stories.

any price below 0.6 is a steal

Let's admit it, it is an act of a fool to predict stock price fluctuation. But one thing that we can predict is the long term performance of the company that we bought. DUFU is definitely one of those companies that is worth to hold for a long term.

No

Gross profit is back to 20%+ ish, fcf is at 22 million and the net profit is flat.
Financially it looks terrible and the current valuation (PE ratio) does not make sense to anyone.
There are a few things to note from this earning report:
1. The result same as what the management guided us in the last quarter earning report.
2. The bleak result is aligned with Seagate and WD weak HDD revenue in Q3.

Although the prospect written by DUFU looks meh to me, but I think they tend to sound pessimistic so that no high hope will be given. In my opinion, they prefer not to over-promised.
WDC and Seagate just had their earning calls not long ago. Both of them guided that the nearline HDD inventory adjustment of their cloud customers are coming to the end.

Please allow me to quote a statement made by the CEO of WDC:
Aaron Rakers -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst
OK. And then as a quick follow-up, I'm just curious on the hard disk drive business. I know the cloud revenue in total was down consistently again quarter over quarter. Just how would you characterize what you're seeing from a nearline perspective from the cloud? Have you started to see demand pull again? Just any kind of context of how you're thinking about the shaping of kind of a recovery here as we move forward.

David Goeckeler -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. We think this past quarter was the bottom, Aaron. And we see improving demand as we move throughout the fiscal year on a quarter-over-quarter basis. We've had certain customers that have been on the sidelines for a while, and they're starting to come back and give us visibility into ordering.

So, we expect the market to recover from here going forward.

Although there will be a lagging period, but the recovery of nearline HDD for WDC has been started in Q4 this year.
Let's see how the market will react to Q3 earnings report of DUFU.

Both Seagate and WD guided their upcoming report would be ugly. I think the investors should look for the sign of bottom in the upcoming earnings call.

tmr drop?

I am not a troll like @HengyuanZai. 

I am just saying what Mr. Yeow said during the briefing with investors. 

@newbie8080
It is not as easy as it sounds. Great volatility in the CPO price will lead to the termination of the customer's contract.

My wild guess is due to the collapse of CPO price.

@snowball2000 End of May

Please understand the reasons behind negative free cash flow for certain companies. It's not necessary that companies with negative FCF are bad companies. :)

There are many reasons for the ridiculous valuation of MY "tech" stocks. 

1. A scarcity of companies that are expanding
2. There are only a few good semicon companies in MY with excellent management.
3. Penang's geographical advantage
4. The customers of our local tech champions are big boys.
5. There is too much capital, but not many good semicon companies available in Bursa.
6. Shxt IB reports.

These are my opinions.

When you compare Inari to OSAT daigor, ASE, clearly there's something wrong with the valuations of Malaysia's "OSAT" companies.

Dear Mr Tan,

My pick for 2022:

MFCB = 30%
SKPRES = 20%
D&O = 20%
PMETAL =10%
FRONTKN = 10%
MYNEWS = 10%

Thank you.

Just buy and hold for at least 3 years.

Since the fall of ATA, I think fund managers in Malaysia will think twice before allocate money to SKP. Even though SKP has a bright future (at least 3 to 5 years of earning growth), but the valuation would not be as lucrative as it was (PE 19x).

@Kang Yao, I think you should account the future fcf into ur valuation. However, I don't think fcf is the real way to value any companies listed in Bursa. Good luck for waiting the market cap drop below 1.5B.

I guess the main reason why investors are selling is because dividend wasn't declared in this quarter. Hence, there will be a discount on the valuation. Mr. Market values MFCB at PE of 10+, by estimating the EPS of the next quarter (excluding one-off gain), RM3.5 - RM3.6 should be the fair value "NOW".

The market is giving discount to the valuation of SKP. I guess PE/G is the right way to estimate the price of a company. I did some calculation on the forward PE of SKP in the current FY with IBs' reports as the reference. Without a doubt, PE 15 should be the normalized value for SKP. Hence, RM1.5+ to RM1.6+ should be the fair value of this stock.

The management guided the NPM for oleo division is ~10% (industrial standard) in the last briefing.

@hopetobecorrect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orLsTUaRZvQ

@capitalist pro

Good article. Keep it up!

wait... drop 50%? What makes you say so?

Is Don Sahong Hydropower Plant parked under intangible asset in the balance sheet?
Anyone knows what's the ROIC of MFCB in FY2020?

4.4billion net cash $.$

Crazy speculations as always, toxxc forum.

Karim just donated 5 million in the share market to show his confidence.

Toxic forum

Toxic comments everywhere haha.
Same as KLSE apps, many 'gurus' came out of nowhere claimed they predicted this long time ago.