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ADATA Lighting Targets Ambitious Revenue Goal for 2014

2014/01/23 | By Ken Liu

ADATA forecasts promising 2014 sales in LED lighting.
ADATA forecasts promising 2014 sales in LED lighting.
ADATA Lighting, the LED lighting arm of memory-module maker ADATA Technology Co., Ltd., predicts its 2014 revenue to quadruple or quintuple from 2013 to above NT$1 billion (US$33.3 million) mostly thanks to sharp increase in orders from overseas and Taiwan.

According to ADATA Technology Chairman, L.P. Chen, the company is a relative latecomer to the LED lighting industry, opening the business in 2009, but its LED lighting operation has many advantages over most of its industry peers in Taiwan, including its globally recognized brand name in the memory-module sector, its sales of memory modules in over 100 countries, and its modularization of products.

Chen points out that although  memory module and LED are two different markets, the company's global memory-module dealers are surprisingly willing to promote the company's LED lights, and that with the island's LED industry still lacking internationally recognizable brands, it is opportune for his company to enter the industry with its established brand in the memory-module market.

In June last year, the company began promoting the “ADATA Lighting” brand of lighting fixtures, which have chips from heavyweight suppliers in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Chen says his company may integrate Taiwan-made chips into his company's products, and that LED sales could rise to as much as 10% of his company's total revenue in two years.

Chen stresses that unlike some LED makers trying to outfit themselves with in-house chip-manufacturing capability, his company has instead invested  in module, thermal, and optic-lens technologies. With proper business model, he reports that his company's LED operation began seeing return in 2012, with some contracts providing gross margin higher than 35%.

Citing lucrative orders the company won from the island's enterprises, including the top three financial holding companies, the company also saw revenue quadruple year on year last year.

Chen notes most of the island's listed enterprises were reluctant to install LED lighting before 2012, when the government had not announced hiking electricity fee and LED bulb prices had not dropped blow US$10. But since the second half of 2013, the company has received rising  contracts. By the end of 2013, the company had landed contracts from 40-plus listed companies on the island.

Chen estimates LED-lighting market to grow annually 40% from 2014 to 2016, to US$20 billion globally. (KL)