IMI earnings up 60% in 2012

MANILA, Philippines - Ayala-owned Integrated Micro-Electronics Inc. (IMI) said its earnings surged more than half last year due to acquisitions and new customers.

In a regulatory filing, IMI said its consolidated income grew 60 percent to $5.4 million from $3.3 million a year earlier.

The Laguna-based firm said it recorded a 15-percent growth in consolidated sales revenues to $661.8 million from $575.5 million a year ago “on acquisitions as well as business expansion of key customers.”

“IMI generally performed much better last year than it did in the previous year in spite of the very daunting global economic scenario,” IMI president and CEO Arthur Tan said.

However, he said “sluggish global economic growth, lower capacity utilization and higher labor costs caused some headwinds on IMI’s margins.”

Tan said IMI is seeing synergies from its acquired entities, which augurs well for future business as its European sites are posting historical highs in monthly sales in the second half of 2012.

Last year, 12 new customer programs started mass manufacturing.

“That is a sign that the confidence level for the economy in general, and IMI in particular, is on the upswing,” Tan said.

“We see this continuing into the first quarter of 2013, so this year we will optimize our capacity utilization to match our global customers’ requirements,” he added.

IMI’s subsidiaries in Europe and Mexico hit $182.2 million in combined revenues while local unit, PSi Technologies Inc. accounted for $45.6 million of revenues.

Its operations in China and Singapore recorded $276.7 million in combined revenues, down one percent due to delay in transition to new models.

The Philippine operations grew its revenues three percent to $159.1 million “due to strong programs in the automotive, industrial and storage device sectors,” IMI said.

IMI is a global provider of electronics manufacturing services and power semiconductor assembly and test services.

It has a total of 17 manufacturing facilities in the Philippines, China, Singapore, US, Mexico, Bulgaria and Czech Republic.