Bottom line: The impact of the pandemic on Foxconn's business lasted into the quaternary quarter of 2022, and an ongoing shortage of chips will reduce its outlook for the present year. However, the Taiwanese manufacturer behemothic expects its acquirement to grow 10 percent for the twelvemonth, and is optimistic nearly the supply concatenation's ability to recover in early on 2022.

Foxconn's parent company, Hon Hai Precision Industry today reported disappointing results for the final quarter, which is partly explained by its accelerated effort to brand electric cars. For the three months ending in December 2022, Foxconn's net income was $1.six billion, which not only misses the average estimates of $1.76 billion projected by analysts, but also represents a three.7 percent decline compared to the aforementioned quarter of 2022. On the other mitt, information technology'south a 15 percent increase over the first quarter of 2022, and close to the company's ain forecast.

Foxconn chairman and CEO Immature Liu said during an investor telephone call the company's acquirement for most of 2022 was driven in no small part by Apple's iPhone 12 lineup, every bit well every bit stiff PC sales. But as the shortage of fries worsened towards the finish of the year, the visitor started monitoring the supply concatenation more closely. Liu explained the affect should be express to under ten pct of client orders, and the visitor remains cautiously optimistic.

The global shortage of fries is probable to last well into 2022, maybe even longer, every bit the supply chain shows little sign of recovery after being strained by high demand at an unfortunate time when droughts, snowstorms, crypto miners, and surging appetite for cars have taken a toll on the biggest chip foundries' output.

Foxconn's MIH platform, the "Android system of the EV industry"

Equally for Foxconn, the company started noticing changes in the materials supply earlier this month and expects the shortage of chips to extend until the second quarter of next year. Liu too detailed plans for expanding into electrical vehicles, including a $1 billion investment to build a manufacturing plant in North America, with the near likely locations being Mexico and Wisconsin. When prepare, the facility would be capable of producing 10,000 cars per month.

All of this is part of Foxconn's "3+3" plan to meliorate its gross margin -- which currently sits at five.65 pct -- to at to the lowest degree 10 percent by 2025, through a combination of bets on electric vehicles, digital healthcare, and industrial robotics. It is, mayhap, no coincidence that just as Apple tree is rumored to prepare its electric car for a debut later on this yr, Foxconn is besides talking upwards its plans to build the "Android system of the EV industry," forth with a solid-state battery that'south supposed to exist set by 2024.

Unlike near automakers which are using a closed arrangement to develop their electric vehicles, Foxconn wants to build an open up EV platform dubbed MIH that already has an ecosystem of 400 partners behind it such as MediaTek, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, ST Micro, and Amazon Web Services. In doing that, Foxconn may go the go-to partner for most EV startups, especially those interested in building autonomous vehicles.