HARD disk drive (HDD) maker, JCY International Bhd, has been thrust into the limelight with a pointy turnaround in fortunes, due to the work-from-home phenomenon.
The corporate’s govt director Datuk James Wong (pic) tells StarBizWeek that there was an enormous rise in demand for HDD because the Covid-19 pandemic pushed many to work remotely, growing the demand for cloud storage (enterprise HDD).
“The outlook over the following six months is sort of good. I imagine we’re nonetheless undervalued. Based mostly on the orders that we now have, we expect we are going to do fairly effectively, ” Wong says.
“There may be some industry-wide consolidation taking place whereas we’re additionally seeing extra demand from the enterprise HDD section. On the peak of demand again in 2010, we checked out over 600 million HDDs within the whole addressable market, ” he provides.
He notes that the HDD {industry} at this time is vastly totally different from a few years in the past as a result of capability storage has elevated exponentially.
“Again then, a drive was solely about 250 megabytes. However now the drives are one or two terabytes (TB), whereas the upper efficiency capability for enterprise utilization is 16-18TB.
“Now, a drive is equal to virtually 14 or 16 drives of the previous and this implies extra components need to be manufactured, ” Wong says.
JCY’s turnaround comes after the loss-making years of 2019 (monetary 12 months 2019 or FY19 ended Sept 30) and FY18.
“The losses we noticed in FY18 and FY19 had been synthetic losses on account of provisions on adjustments in accounting requirements.
“These impairments had been incurred on account of underutilised capability then, ” he says.
“Now, my machines are totally utilised and we additionally need to put money into new machines. Subsequently, I can write these (impairments) again.
“Our money place continues to be very robust and continues to get stronger, ” Wong provides.
In its most up-to-date third quarter, the corporate reported a internet revenue of RM3.14mil from a internet lack of RM26.36mil a 12 months in the past, with income rising 6.36% year-on-year (y-o-y) to RM227.04mil.
“There will likely be writebacks. If I write again 100%, then there will likely be an enormous soar in earnings however I cannot do this.
“Perhaps solely 50% of what was written off (then), ” Wong says.
He sees demand sustaining within the close to future with newer IT applied sciences comparable to cloud computing, contact tracing and 5G.
“All these knowledge will must be saved someplace. There are two selections out there available in the market now: HDD or stable state drives (SSD). However SSD may be very costly and prices about 10 times extra for an organization that desires to arrange cloud computing knowledge centres, ” Wong says.
The principle HDD gamers available in the market are Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba.
Wong says demand for HDDs can also be being pushed by the rise in state surveillance, primarily on account of China, as these surveillance knowledge within the form of video and footage must be saved, if they’re to be retrieved at a later time.
Commenting on the {industry}, he says there’s some consolidation taking place, as some opponents have been unable to ship as a result of scarcity available in the market.
“Subsequently, we now have cannibalised a part of the market share.
“There was a slight enhance in promoting costs additionally, ” he says.
Kenanga Analysis, in its report issued on Wednesday, says that JCY’s two main prospects which contribute to greater than 80% of its gross sales had seen HDD demand quantity cargo within the final six months (when it comes to Exabyte) leaping 47% y-o-y and 21% y-o-y, respectively.
“Each prospects are guiding a powerful ramp-up within the second half of 2020 due to elevated demand for 14TB drives, in addition to the upcoming 16TB and 18TB drives, ” Kenanga Analysis says.
It provides that JCY is realigning its manufacturing plant and bringing in new tools to cater for the rise in elements: actuator arm and disc separation plates, to deal with the rise in orders.
Kenanga is anticipating JCY’s internet revenue for FY21 to triple to RM150.8mil, because the group takes on a better loading quantity within the second half of 2020 and into 2021.
It has rated JCY a buying and selling purchase with a good worth of RM1.35 primarily based on 18.7 times the FY21 estimated price-to-earnings ratio, which is in step with its three-year imply.
JCY’s turnaround in fortunes appears to have caught everybody abruptly and it’s actually one of many unanticipated beneficiaries of the continuing Covid-19 pandemic.