Foxconn's third-quarter revenue rose 47% from a year earlier to NT$3.03 trillion, about $95.4 billion, beating analyst forecasts as customers accelerated orders for artificial intelligence servers, Reuters reported Monday. September sales topped NT$1 trillion for the first time, a monthly record for the world's largest contract electronics maker.

What Happened

The quarterly figure, reported by Reuters, came in well above the LSEG SmartEstimate of NT$2.83 trillion.

September revenue rose about 38% year on year to roughly NT$1.16 trillion, or about $36.5 billion. According to the Taipei Times, that was also up 25.7% from August's NT$921.77 billion, a monthly increase the company attributed mainly to smartphone sales. Revenue for the first nine months of the year rose 39.53% to NT$7.67 trillion, ahead of the NT$5.5 trillion recorded in the same period a year earlier, the paper reported.

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Foxconn, formally Hon Hai Precision Industry, said its cloud and networking products, mostly AI servers, grew strongly during the quarter as customers sped up AI orders. Electronic components and computing products also grew.

Foxconn's shares closed up 1.2% Monday. They have gained about 10% this year, compared with a rise of roughly 72% for Taiwan's broader stock market.

Why It Matters

Foxconn is Apple's main iPhone assembler and the largest builder of the server racks used in Nvidia-based AI data centers. Because it publishes revenue monthly, its figures are watched as one of the earliest readings on how much AI hardware is actually shipping, ahead of quarterly reports from chipmakers and cloud providers.

The third-quarter numbers suggest that demand from companies building AI infrastructure has not slowed. In August, Foxconn said it expected AI server rack shipments to grow by a high double-digit percentage from the second quarter to the third, and to more than double for the full year. The company does not give numerical revenue forecasts.

The gap between the company's sales growth and its share price points to a separate issue. Taiwan's market is heavily weighted toward chipmakers, and contract assembly generally carries thinner margins than chipmaking, which makes Foxconn's profitability on AI racks a key question for its stock.

Outlook

Foxconn said it expects AI-related operations to keep growing in the fourth quarter. Combined with the usual year-end peak season for consumer electronics, it said, performance should be in line with current market expectations. The company added that it will keep monitoring the effects of a volatile global political and economic environment.

What to Watch

Foxconn will report full third-quarter earnings Nov. 12. Investors will look for the margin the company earns on AI server racks, any update to its rack shipment expectations and how it describes demand for the fourth quarter.

October revenue, due early next month, will show whether the September surge from smartphones carries into the holiday quarter alongside AI server growth.