Apple supplier AMS reported fourth-quarter revenues above its own forecast amid strong demand for high-end smartphones, but warned revenues in the first quarter would fall even without negative effects from the coronavirus. Sensor specialist AMS, generating a large portion of revenue with sensors for Apple’s iPhones, had guided for $610-$650 million in revenues in the fourth quarter and an EBIT margin of at least 28%.
Adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) were at $184.3 million and revenue reached $655 million in the three months through December, the Austrian group, which is about to take over Germany’s Osram, said on Tuesday.
Assuming no meaningful negative impact from the coronavirus outbreak, AMS expects revenue in the first quarter to ease to$480-520 million due to usual weak demand at the start of the year. The EBIT margin is seen to fall to 19-21%.
AMS has no production facilities in China, but supply chain disruptions in the country due to the new virus could hit its business.
MacDailyNews Note: AMS supplies Apple with optical sensors for the company’s TrueDepth Camera system which enables 3D facial recognition (Face ID) and other features such as Animoji and Memoji on Apple iPhones and iPads. The TrueDepth Camera system consists of a sensor with three modules; a dot projector that projects a grid of small infrared dots onto a user’s face, a module called the flood illuminator that reads the resulting pattern and generates a 3D facial map, and an infrared camera which takes an infrared picture of the user. This map is compared with the registered face using a secure subsystem, and the user is authenticated if the two faces match with a sufficiently high degree of accuracy.
AMS’s press release is here.
