Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics are both expected to see their first-quarter revenues buck seasonal patterns, as sales momentum for their US-based clients' new models made available in fourth-quarter 2018 will continue in the current quarter.

Compal became the largest notebook supplier worldwide in 2018 and delivered a total of 39.5 million notebooks annually as the company was able to secure its orders from the top-3 notebook vendors. Compal's partnership with Dell is especially tight as the US-based vendor has given orders for most of its high-end gaming to mainstream enterprise models to the maker.

Compal has announced consolidated revenues of NT$85.7 billion (US$2.76 billion) for December 2018, down 10.2% on month, but up 14.61% on year, while the amount for the whole year 2018 reached NT$967.68 billion, up 9.02% on year.

Compal shipped 3.5 million notebooks in December 2018, bringing the company's shipments in the fourth quarter of 2018 to 10.2 million units and 39.5 million for 2018. Most of the company's non-PC businesses such as tablet, wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, enjoyed shipment growths in 2018, but its smartphone shipments declined.

In response to US-China trade tensions, Compal has recently activated its production lines in Vietnam, but the capacity of the site so far is still not yet fully utilized.

Quanta registered consolidated revenues of NT$102.66 billion for December, down 7.37% on month, but up 18.35% on year. Consolidated revenues for the fourth quarter of 2018 were NT$316.69 billion, up 12.2% sequentially and 12.4% on year, and for 2018 consolidated sales reached NT$1.03 trillion, up 0.65% on year.

Quanta shipped 3.2 million notebooks in December, flat from a month ago; 9.6 million units in the fourth quarter and 37.6 million units in 2018, down from 2017's 42.4 million.

Quanta's weak notebook shipment performance was partly due to the delay of the new MacBook Air, sources said. However, the company's performance in the first quarter of 2019 is expected to benefit, according to the sources.

Wistron reported consolidated revenues of NT$86.43 billion for December, growing 12.23% on month and 4.78% on year. The company's revenues for 2018 reached a new historical high at NT$889.26 billion, up 6.42% on year with shipments in December arriving at NT$1.5 million units.

For January 2019, Wistron expects a sharp decline in its notebook shipments.

In December, Wistron also shipped 200,000 servers, 150,000 LCD TVs, 1.3 million desktops and 600,000 LCD monitors; however, the company expects all of the above product shipments to experience double-digit percentage decreases in the first quarter of 2019.

Wistron has also been expanding its capacity at plants in India and the Philippines. The plants in India are mainly used for supplying handset clients, while the plants in the Philippines are for PC clients and will begin mass production in the first half of 2019.