An affiliate company of AUO (AU Optronics) Group, Darfon Electronics, which is based in Taiwan, has entered the PV market with products such as PV inverters and PV silver paste, which are used in the manufacture of PV modules from crystalline silicon solar cells.
President, Andy Su revealed on 4th March at an investor’s conference that the company has already commenced the production of silver paste and would produce the inverters in the third quarter of 2011. This production would coincide with the PV business development, which is to be carried out by AUO utilizing it’s in- house manufacturing expertise of TV inverters to PV inverters and its knowledge of silver treatment in MLCC (multi layer ceramic capacitors) production for the PV silver paste. Commercial shipments of PV silver paste would be available from the middle of 2011 onwards.
According to Su, Darfon has always led the supply of illuminated notebook keyboards and in the production of external keyboards, which are utilized in all in one PCs and tablets. The total shipment of these products would be increasing from 60 million units to 70 million units in the current year. Its operations in 2010 has led to the generation of a net EPS of NT$1.81 i.e. US$0.06. Based on this, the Board of Directors of the company has taken a decision to distribute an NT$1.50 cash dividend per share to their shareholders.