Joseph Tung, Director, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President
Management
Good morning and good evening everyone. Thank you for attending ASE’s Q1 2006 Earnings Release Conference Call. For access of the presentation materials, please go to our website www.aseglobal.com where you can find the hyperlink to our presentation. Let me start, as we turn to page 3, which will show you the sequential comparative of our performance in quarter one. To start, we had a much stronger than normal Q1 as our consolidated revenue of NT$24.8 million dropped only 6% sequentially, compared to a normal seasonal drop of 10-15%. In fact, in US dollar terms, revenue only declined 2.6%. If we take out the negative impact on revenue from continuing (inaudible) businesses in China, our main business actually stayed flat of last quarter. Despite a minor revenue decline, we will continue to see efficiency and improvement in stress and cost management. Q1 margins further improved as gross profit went up 1% to reach NT$6.6 billion, and operating profits grew 10% to NT$4.7 billion. Netting our non-operating expenses of NT$602 million, pre-tax income is monitored to NT$1.4 billion. Net income after tax and minority interest grew to NT$3.2 billion, after recognizing tax of NT$18 million and minority interest adjustment of NT$426 million. EPS for the quarter was NT$0.69, up from $0.65 a quarter ago. On a sequential basis, assembly revenue dropped 5%. Tax revenue dropped 3%, while marginal assembly revenues dropped 28%. Separately, material revenue dropped 17%; largely as a result of the discontinuing of our lead (inaudible) operation at the end of Q4. Substrate revenue came down 8% due to normal seasonality. Utilization rate of both assembly and test were above 90% and ASP remains stable in the quarter. In terms of profit margins, gross margins improved from 24.8% a quarter ago to 26.7%. Looking at respective costs of goods…