Mediatek will see a growth in fourth-quarter revenues from the third quarter, thanks to a boost in demand for optical storage media products and a continual rise in consumer electronics product orders, said chairman Ming-kai Tsai at the company’s third-quarter investors conference on October 24. The company’s revenues in 2003 are expected to rise from 2002 as well, Tsai added, mainly on growth in sales of DVD player chips and Combi chips, and a boost from the addition of mobile phone and DVD-RW chip sales in the second half of next year.

Mediatek posted third-quarter revenues of NT$6.75 billion, a drop of only 0.5% from the previous quarter, which was much less than the anticipated 10% decline, due to better-than-expected DVD player chip sales.

Net profits hit NT$2.624 billion for earnings of NT$5.75 per share.

Combined revenues for the first three quarters of 2002 totaled NT$20.495 billion, achieving 79.4% of the company’s full-year target of NT$25.809 billion.

Inventory has slid from NT$2.721 billion in the first half to NT$1.756 billion in the second half, and with monthly revenues in September and October at around NT$2.9 billion and November revenues expected to reach NT$2.5 billion, the level is relatively low, said Tsai.

With optical storage chip inventory lowered since August and motherboard shipments rebounding in the third quarter, Tsai expects optical storage chip shipments to rebound in the fourth quarter. Also, the rise in DVD player chip shipments that began in the third quarter is expected to continue strongly into the first quarter of next year.