NEG: Glass substrate factory is expected to resume normal production by the end of March this year

In December last year, a 5-hour power outage occurred at the Takatsuki plant of Nippon Electric Glass (NEG), a glass substrate manufacturer, which directly damaged production equipment and caused the plant to shut down. NEG recently said that the suspended glass substrate plant is expected to resume normal production by the end of March this year. At the same time, in response to the expansion of demand, the company plans to expand glass substrate production in China, with a capacity increase of about 50%.

NEG said on the 2nd that due to the continued growth in demand for glass substrates for TVs and personal computers, the company will increase its LCD glass substrate production capacity in China by 50% this year, with an investment of approximately 30 billion yen. Through this increase in production investment, the proportion of its Xiamen factory in the company's total production will increase from about a quarter to more than 30%.

It is understood that NEG has a 20% share of the global LCD panel substrate glass market. The unexpected power outage also caused market concerns that the panel shortage will be further exacerbated. In response to the power outage, NEG said that the repair work of all equipment at the Takatsuki City plant is expected to be completed by the end of March this year and will resume normal operation. The equipment repair costs will be accrued as a special loss of approximately 6.5 billion yen.

At the same time, due to optimistic market demand, NEG expects its consolidated net profit this quarter to increase by 2% from the previous quarter to 15.5 billion yen. In 2021, consolidated revenue will increase by 7% year-on-year to 260 billion yen, consolidated operating profit will increase by 13.2% year-on-year to 20 billion yen, and consolidated net profit will increase by 1.6% year-on-year to 15.5 billion yen.