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HTC Corp posted third-quarter profit that beat analyst estimates as one-time gains helped overcome eroding sales amid competition from Xiaomi Corp and other Chinese smartphone makers.
Third-quarter net income was NT$640 million ($21 million), the Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company said in a statement on Friday. The average of 15 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg was for profit of NT$501.6 million.
HTC, maker of the One line of smartphones, posted a loss a year earlier.
HTC's mid- and low-end phones released in China face competition from devices by Xiaomi and Huawei Technologies Co, while the introduction of Apple's iPhone 6 models attracted high-end buyers. Sales and profit probably will drop again this quarter, analysts estimate, while the company plans to release its first action camera and a tablet computer developed for Google.
"In China, you have Xiaomi and Huawei and a whole bunch of cheaper handsets with quite good performance, while in the States you have the iPhone," Birdy Lu, who rates HTC shares hold at Deutsche Bank AG in Taipei, said before the earnings announcement. "From a share price perspective, it might not fall off too much from here because there's already no expectation for the stock."
