Taipei, April 22, 2008 (CENS)--Compal Electronics Co., one of Taiwan`s leading contract manufacturers of notebook computers, recently acquired orders for one million NBs from Dell Computer Inc.

To meet influx of orders, Compal will launch mass production at the fourth plant in Kunshan of Jiangsu Province, mainland China sometime in the second quarter of this year.

Thanks to the outstanding performance in shipment, an institutional investor predicted Compal to enjoy pretax earnings of over NT$3 billion (US$99.33 million at US$1:NT$30.2), or NT$0.8 (US$0.026) in earnings per share, in the first quarter of this year. But for the impact of listing employee bonus as operating costs, the company would be able to see pretax earnings reach NT$3.5 billion (US$115.89 million), or NT$0.85 (US$0.028) in EPS, in the first quarter.

Compal estimated it would deliver 12 million and 13 million NBs in the first half of this year, as well as 19 million to 20 million in the second half. In a word, Compal will see this year`s total shipments grow over 40% from last year`s 23 million units, making the firm record the highest shipment growth in domestic NB contract manufacturing sector.

Poised as Dell`s largest contract manufacturer of Latitude-series business NBs, Compal has recently acquire Dell orders for consumer NBs, which are slated for delivery sometime in the second half of this year. It is expected Compal will remain Dell`s No.1 contract manufacturer by shipping more than 10 million NBs to Dell this year.

After the fourth plant begins mass production in the second quarter, Compal will see total production capacity reach 40 million units of NBs this year, sufficient enough to support its growth till the second half of next year. Besides the expansion in Kunshan, Compal is also boosting production capacity in Vietnam.

Dell has resolved to venture into production of low-cost personal computers, following the footsteps of Asustek Computer, Hewlett Packard and Acer. An industry insider anticipated Dell will place orders for two million units of low-cost PCs with Compal, and local firm will start to fill the orders in the third quarter of this year.

(by Ben Shen)