Rumor: ASRock is going to make graphics cards

According to Digitimes, ASRock has active plans to start fabbing graphics cards. ASRock would release AMD cards solely, and in April the first one should surface.

As Digitimes reports; Motherboard player ASRock reportedly will enter the graphics card market in April and focus mainly on supplying AMD-based products, according to some market watchers. With the increasing shipment proportion of high-end motherboards and rising sales for its IPC and server products, the company's EPS for 2018 stands a chance of returning to NT$9 (US$0.31) if cryptocurrency mining can maintain its momentum, the market watchers noted.

ASRock had consolidated revenues of NT$9.21 billion for 2017 with net profits of NT$469 million and EPS of NT$4.02, up dramatically from 2016's NT$1.39. The company also decided to distribute dividends of NT$4 in cash. As for January, ASRock reported consolidated revenues of NT$915 million, up 21.54% on month and 35.05% on year with net profit of NT$69 million and EPS NT$0.57.

However, the company had not been performing well prior to 2017, only shipping less than four million motherboards in 2016 or less than half the volumes shipped in earlier years. ASRock's performance pick-up in 2017 was mainly due to Gigabyte Technology's business re-organization, which gave ASRock an opportunity to significantly increase its shipment proportion of mid-range to high-end motherboards, while strong demand for its cryptocurrency mining motherboards also helped boost its sales in the year.

At the same time, ASRock has seen increasing sales for its server and IPC motherboards, which helped reduce its reliance on the consumer motherboard business whose revenue share went down to only around 70% at the end of 2017 from 85% in 2016, the market watchers said. Since AMD so far has shown no sign of planning for a capacity expansion, ASRock's entry into the graphics card market is expected to affect AMD's GPU supply to other graphics card vendors.