Acer Incorporated (2353) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a round of applause to welcome Acer Chairman and CEO, Jason Chen.

Hello, everyone. Hello, Berlin, for all friends and new friends. Okay, let's -- show me some hands. For new, first time coming to Acer's Global Press Conference, show me your hand. New friends, welcome, welcome. And for people being here multiple times. I know you, you know me. Thank you very much to come again. For the industry, the industry -- the computer industry was started back a long time ago, 1946, the first computer was invented. And throughout the process, a lot of things have been changed. In 1976, as was established is funded by our founder, Mr. Stan Shih. And over years, we have this belief to keep breaking the barriers within people and technology. There are many great product being introduced, a lot of initiative was done. But within the group, there is a brand come with a long, long, long history. Let's look at it. [Presentation]

[indiscernible]. I would like to invite [indiscernible] join me on the stage. What's the brand story behind [indiscernible]?

Well, first, thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone. I'm super excited to be here again but this time, this is to relaunch an old brand, as you mentioned, which is truly meaningful to me, Packard Bell, and let me tell you the story. You need to make yourself comfortable because the story started a century ago. In the late '20s, [ Leon Packard ] and [ Aibel ] founded [indiscernible], starting with radios and later expanding into TVs, computers.

We started with a radio set.

Yes. Important to remember. But one believe has always remained, technology should be accessible to everyone. Today, we're bringing that spirit back, an easy and intuitive technology that fits naturally in your daily life. At Packard Bell, you understood we take it easy.

Taking it easy.

Cool isn't it. So that's why we're putting technology where it belongs, to support people's life. And this year, we're reviving the brand with a series of lifestyle products. You can see [indiscernible] them, which are really designed for real people. So we have been refreshing this visual identity, and it stands out in a noisy world. We use simple shapes, confident colors and the unifying signal --

I can tell, confident color for confident people.

Thank you. So we need to ensure that Packard Bell products is recognized at a glance without the techno show off. But remember, Jason, I think you mentioned it, Packard Bell started 100 years ago.

100 years ago.

With radios. And that's why today, we wanted to start this new chapter by echoing our past and by launching the [ dot look ]. So as you can see, the [ dot loop ] is actually a vintage turntable with modern touch. It's compatible with vinyl records, but it also has Bluetooth and even voice control.

So this is a vintage turntable with Bluetooth connected and with voice recognition technology included.

Exactly. So you'd be able to see at the stage after. And basically, you can bring different ways of enjoying music together in one device. So you can switch seamlessly from The Beatles to electronic music. But let me spend a bit more time on one last product. The [indiscernible] book. Actually --

We can't do without computer.

Exactly. So the that book is actually an orange PC. Design for those who, well, spill coffee on their keyboards --

I hope not.

No, better not, but it all happened to us. For those who blow into the USB port for the one who click restart instead of shutdown. All in all, this PC is just a simple one, and you pay for the tech, the use, not for the hype, you don't because Packard Bell is a brand which shows life as it is messy, joyful, and real. And remember, take it easy.

Thank you. [indiscernible]. Thank you. Now let's come back to Acer. We do have this belief, 4 major pillars, computer, AI medical, sustainability and smart living. Years ago, we made our commitment on sustainability industry layers environmental friendly. So we start to use recycled material to make computers. And we committed to [ i.e. 100 ] 2035, net 0 by 2050. Many people ask us say, how is it going? I'm now very proud to share with you, we set our milestone, and now we are overachieving our milestone. So we are very excited about that. And that's only the first layer, environmental friendly. The second layer of sustainability is, of course, the corporate resilience is want to be sustained as long as possible for the foreseeable future. And last but not least, the third layer of sustainability is about human health. How do we sustain people's health better. And therefore, we start to use AI technology into medical areas, smart medical, how do we bridge the medical device for people cannot reach the best possible medical device and solutions. And for that, I would like to invite Dr. [ Ellen Len ] to join me on the stage. Welcome [indiscernible]. [indiscernible], how long have you been with Acer?

3 years after now.

Okay. This is one of few companies in the world that from a technology company that we committed into medical, into health care, and we do hire medical doctor to join us. [ Alan ] practice, medical in multiple countries, especially, I think it's notable that he actually did that in Africa for 10 years. I want to share with people --

Good morning, everyone, by the way. It happened on my first [ slide ], I actually talked about my experience in West Africa. This is the photo I took in [ Burkina ] where we did community service, they're into a place where there's no electricity, water or road and we found that we are fighting polio. So people have to vaccinate it with a polio vaccine. But the vaccine needs to be stored in a cold-chain environment, so you need a refrigerator, but since there's no electricity, so someone invented this gas bottle power refrigerator to store the vaccine. But the problem is we had the vaccine, we had the technology, but still, the virus was circulating without being controlled. So I learned this lesson that with technology and with this human, there needs to be a bridge. So this is what we're trying to do. We try to introduce the technology where people -- where it's most needed through the bridge.

That's where we come from. Technology. We are a technology company, what can we do health care to medical area.

Yes, in the area of AI, the same concept actually applies. AI has a lot of potential in health care. But the key is not lies in the technicality, but actually, the barrier is whether sometimes social behavior culture. So how can we effectively harness the AI for health care is the key. And this is where -- as Medical makes a difference.

So we are using AI, artificial intelligence, to break the barrier for medical, for health care.

Yes. For the past 8 years, we invented, we actually build hardware, software, health care solution, but in the area of AI accelerated from predictive AI that help earlier detection, now we apply generative AI as a large language model to alleviate the burden of doctors in their documentation.

Yes, I remember last year, we talked about agentic AI for Medical and how is it going now?

Yes, you deploy this agentic AI into the hospital and embedded that into the electronic medical record. So we basically can alleviate the burden of doctor. Next time we will go to this kind of hospital. You can see that doctor will talk to you more instead of just typing behind their screens. And now we also apply AI for drug development. We actually apply AI to design a cancer immunotherapy to file against cancer.

That's a big potential for AI for technologies to do new drug development. And yes, Acer, we are already in this area.

Yes. And what's more exciting, we have this implementation of [ AIoT ] for continuous monitoring. I'll give you an example. In this example, you can see that there are the 14% of the chance for somewhat to have a stroke once they have it in 1 year, the second stroke can actually even more detrimental than dementia.

Wait, having a stroke is bad, but you were saying high percentage of people will have a second stroke within a year. That's even worse.

Yes. So to prevent that person from the second stroke, you need to control blood sugar, blood lipid, blood pressure, stop smoking and everything and it takes a nurse to phone that person and collect the information like 30 minutes per person per day, and that's too tedious. Now then we can apply this AI to alleviate the burden of this case management, this nurse to prevent the stroke. Another example, this is actually more exciting. We want to even prevent people from coming to the hospital. To do that, you need to stay healthy. You need to actually exercise to exercise. So we, along with our partner, [indiscernible], who developed this software that can help monitor the subtle change of movement through time.

So this is a complicated chart. So we're not going to read them all through, right?

I'll take it easy. When you age or when you have injury, your movement change. And sometimes it's to subtle for a doctor to even to notice. But with this AI, it can actually change -- you can monitor the change of your movement like the knee joint or your central [indiscernible], if you walk wobbly, all this could be monitored by the app from a cell phone and [indiscernible] can give you a longitudinal chart like a radar charge to make comparison. And so by doing so, you can help the doctor to detect the disease progression earlier and give a better care. And by doing so, we also want to prevent people from coming to the hospital. Another exciting development is that we talked about health equity. So globally, people are living in different tiers of health care that they can --

Yes. I call it medical divide.

Yes. So sometimes we call it health disparity. Tech Indonesia, for example, this is a country with thousands of thousands of island. And the majority of the specialists that practice deliver special health care live in major cities that are in few islands. So you can imagine a lot of [indiscernible] in those islands, they don't have specialized care. So we can deploy our AI where doctors cannot travel, but the AI can travel there to fill the gap. So through this initiative, we are making health care more accessible and health equity more achievable.

Thank you. Thank you, Alan. It's very important to see we already reached to multiple countries, and we're already getting a lot of time approvals and there are many -- hundreds hospitals and medical institutions already implemented our solution. We are excited to see, but this is just the beginning.

Yes, this is the beginning. And our ambition is very simple. We want to bring intelligence to where care is most needed.

Thank you, [ Adam ]. Thank you very much. Keep it up.Keep it up. In fact, [indiscernible] is not alone. Now we have multiple medical doctors working for Acer and working for you. Now coming back to AI solutions. AI, we apply that to medical, we apply into multiple many areas. And the foundation for one device, AI is to make sure that we have the right product for you. For that, I would like to introduce [ Diana ] to join me on the stage. [ Diana]. Before introducing the product, can you introduce yourself a little bit?

Good morning, everyone. This is [indiscernible]. I'm a marketing manager in our regional office based in Switzerland.

Switzerland.

Yes. But today, let me introduce you this beautiful product, the [ ASR-SFFRTX ] park. This is our reference design for the NVIDIA [ RTX park ] Super chip. But let's take a look at what's inside. So this great powerhouse is driven by up to a 6,144 core Blackwell RTX GPU paired with 20 core NVIDIA grade CPU. And this is not even a typo Jason, 6,144 core. This is serious AI computing power that can fit right in the palm of your hand. And not a long time ago, we were talking about single AI agents. We are already at the next generation talking about multiple agents. And now with up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory, the [indiscernible] doesn't just handle small AI tasks. It can run and process large amounts of AI tasks locally without reaching out to the cloud. And that's, of course, Jason, is a big change for individuals because now up to a whole [ 1 petaflop ] of FP4 AI performance can sit right beside our monitor. So 1 petaflop, 1 pound, that's exactly the trade we're making here.

Thank you. Thank you, Diana.

Yes. And AI is not longer only for bigger companies. It can also come now from individuals. We believe that the next generation of AI breakthroughs will also come from individuals like small developers, small teams or also students, why not? And that's why we're trying to put AI within the reach of people.

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Tiana. We are very happy to have all this AI power coming to us and talking about AI power, we can't forget about NVIDIA. We are very happy to have our friends from NVIDIA here to join us on the stage today. [ Adan ] [indiscernible] good morning.

[indiscernible], thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure to be back here at [indiscernible] 2026 and for you to invite me back on stage.

Always. You're always welcome.

So Jason, what we just heard about your new small form factor PC. So this uses our new RTX Spark super chip. So why don't I tell you a little bit more about why that's so --

Please.

So first and foremost, this is RTX. So this is going to be an incredible platform for all your creative and gaming needs, right? You are going to be able to render massive 90 gig 3D scenes with full ray tracing. You're going to be able to add 8K videos with NVIDIA's 422 [indiscernible] --

[indiscernible] because our computing powers.

Exactly. And of course, you're going to be able to play all of your AAA titles fantastic frame rate at 1440p. But what also makes this product special is the fact that it's been designed to run agentic AI. So what does that mean? Well, it means you are going to be able to run the most advanced 120 billion parameter agent locally with context lengths of 1 million tokens, which is huge.

So when needed, you can be [indiscernible] site.

Exactly. And of course, you're going to be able to run all of your cutting-edge models locally. And these models have been trained on [indiscernible] for us. So you just know you're going to have fantastic reliability and stability. Now this platform runs Windows, Microsoft Windows on [ ARM ]. So it's really important that we have a strong ecosystem. And that is why we have partnered with our friends at Microsoft to make sure that all of your favorite apps, frameworks, models, agents, they all run fantastically well on [ RTX Spark]. So for creative, we've worked with the likes of Adobe, Blender, CapCut, [indiscernible] to make sure they --

[indiscernible] make sure they run fantastic as well.

Well. Yes. And for AI, you know what, it's really important that we make sure this is a fantastic AI developer platform that runs on Windows. So we have -- we have made sure that with [ code ] acceleration that we can optimize key AI frameworks.

Not just [indiscernible], but [indiscernible].

Exactly. Key frameworks and for the developer tools as well. And for gaming, of course, we're working with all the developers to make sure that your favorite games, latest titles all run fantastically well, like Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends, PUBG, all run RTX platform.

That's fantastic.

But you know what, Jason, for creators, this is a great platform.

It's an absolute [indiscernible].

It is. And the reason for that is because of those rich RTX features that you get with it. So you can use the Blackwell [ Encodecode ]. So that gives you support for 422 and AV1 support. With NVIDIA Broadcast and RTX video AI effects, you are going to be able to deliver industry-leading broadcast and live streaming capabilities. The [ coder ] acceleration, now [ coder ] acceleration, that is going to give you the best performance for your AI image and video creation. And using NVIDIA [indiscernible] natively, you know that you're going to have fantastic performance and efficiency. And of course, we're going to have full support for NVIDIA optics and DLSS. And what that means is you are -- you're going to have be able to accelerate your final renders and have interactive view ports in your favorite --

Tha's great.

Absolutely. But I think what's most exciting about this platform is actually how you're going to be able to interact with it, okay? Agents, they're going to be like the teammates. You are going to be able to help people create content. You're going to be able to help people code, right? You are going to be able to run this across all of your Windows applications. And of course, you can run this both locally and in the cloud.

Hybrid model.

That's right. But running locally gives you a lot of advantages, right?

Of course, so security control.

Absolutely, yes. So privacy, okay, always on, correct. You're going to have access to your local files much more efficiently. And of -- and of course, you can run this at all times without that worry of any token cost.

[indiscernible] all.

So all of that, if you bring all that together, that's what makes this such a special and exciting platform, right? It is efficient. It's always on. and it's ready for what's next. And Jason, I'm really excited that we can take this and launch this next chapter with Acer. I look forward to what we can do.

Very exciting. Thank you very much.

Jason. Thank you so much.

Thank you. For that, I would like to bring more device for AI, [ Diana].

What happens now when we bring the same idea to businesses, meet the [indiscernible] AI mini workstation. Inside, we can find Intelcore ultra --

It looks like a little guy but actually powerful.

Indeed. In fact, we have the built-in Intel [ Ark B 390 ] GPU. And of course, [indiscernible] have a lot of questions around being AI ready. But with this device, we open up new possibilities because now with up to 96 gigabytes of dual channel memory, can support up to 120 billion parameters for AI models and power agentic AI across hybrid environments. And this small device adjacent is also copilot [indiscernible]. So this means that it can run AI augmented application on Windows efficiently giving, for example, creators or engineers the power to have those AI workloads, especially with 3D visualization or engineering, right? And this unlocks new possibilities for AI-driven innovation because now we're removing here another barrier deployment. With Acer [indiscernible], you can bring AI agentic easier into everyday business activities, right? With one click installation, easy setup and ready to use AI business tools, you can actually make AI work for you. It helps AI reason plan and act to automate those tasks by combining local and cloud intelligence. And it helps you find the right balance, right, between powerful privacy and efficiency.

That's important.

Indeed, and now small businesses don't have to wait to become big companies before starting to use AI. They can start right away and that's indeed a really powerful shift here, Jason.

That's very exciting. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Diana. I'm sure -- you're already for the mainstream as product, the shift, let's look at the video. [Presentation]

[indiscernible] It's really important, right? But it isn't just about adding more power. It's about great technology should fit into your everyday life and not the other way around. And that's exactly the idea behind the asset there. We are bringing you today the Acer [indiscernible]. So a bigger screen with the performance you need in a remarkably thin, lightweight all aluminum design. And you have now the big screen experience but without the big screen package. And we want to make technology easier to live with, right? This device up to a whole 3K OLED display, it's all packed in a body that's just under 13.5 millimeter thin. See enough to forget is there, but powerful enough to remember why we brought it with you. Because inside, we have the [ InterCore ] Series 3 processor that keeps performance moving right along with you and reason. Lighter doesn't have to mean less capable, right? And here, you see, we wanted to make it a bit more personal because great technology should fit in your everyday life and not the other way around. The Acer [indiscernible] 6 comes with multiple color options, and it doesn't have to be just another gray box, right?

It's a beautiful machine with wonderful finishing.

Indeed, so the Acer [indiscernible] you have more screen, more freedom, but less weight.

Thank you. Thank you, Diana.

Thank you, Jason.

Thank you. We achieved this wonderful device. We can't do it without the industry cooperation. For that, I would like to invite our friends in Microsoft, [ Mark Linton], to join me on the stage, Mark.

So I feel good. It's very good, very good. It's great to be here at IFA with everyone and frankly, to celebrate Acer's 50th birthday. Microsoft is 50 as well. So we share that in common. And we go back many --

Thank you for the partnership.

Thank you. So I thought we'd have a little fun here and go back in time to one of the first projects that Acer and Microsoft did which was the [ MPF 500 PC ] --

Way before my day.

Way before your -- and mine too. Although I did start programming on a very similar looking device. It ran DOS. It had an [ Intel 8088 ] processor. It had 256 kilobytes of RAM, if you can believe that.

At that time was big.

That's right.

It was big at that time.

Not one, but 2, 5.25 floppy drives, and don't forget a 10 or 20-megabyte hard drive.

Now the memory is coming back. Floppy drives.

Yes. There you go. So one of the very early designs and of course, if you fast forward to today, look at some of the designs that we're launching together with Acer, it's just amazing. If you look at the AI capability now that you can have in small form factor devices, really, you've got the Veritone 110, which is an exciting offering there for small form factor capability with copilot plus on it. You've got the Acer Swift 16 that we spoke about in the middle which is a great option, larger screen, very thin and light, very metallic. And Jason and I were just talking to the retailers around the world are really excited about this product, not only for the beautiful design the capability that it has, but of course, at an affordable --

Well adapted.

Yes, very well accepted. So we're excited there. And then you heard from the NVIDIA team on the SFF RTX Spark. And I'll talk about what we're doing in AI but just think this is essentially getting to supercomputer capability on the desktop. So if you want to do AI work, including up to frontier like models, $120 billion parameter you need that workhorse with unified memory to enable that AI capability. And it's so exciting to see this launch right now because we're going to give developers, creators, and builders what they need to run AI workloads right on the desk as well.

We are seeing the usage is pushing more and more from the cloud to onsite to the edge, and it's coming -- coming to becoming a hybrid AI computing model.

Very much so. And we're seeing the customer demand there, and I'll talk a little bit about [indiscernible] intelligence in a moment, but that's how we think about it. these powerful PCs can do so much, why not offload to the PC for your AI workloads and create workloads. So of course, Windows is a place where people go to create, to be productive and to get more done. And so when we think about it, we have over 1 billion users on Windows 11 around the world. And those users create, play, code, work, learn, have fun on their PCs and really we're innovating there for all of these customer types. And really, with AI, we want to fuel the ambition that human ambition to get more done to have technology help you no matter what you're looking to do. And so we're innovating in a number of ways. We're innovating in new experiences that help you be more productive and creative. We're weaving AI in to not only the user experience but also the platform. And then finally, we're continuing to improve on the fundamentals. We've made significant gains on things like boot time, Windows Hello World response to this, working on 8 gig. We're optimizing so that 8-gigabyte RAM runs great on machines as well. We're helping users customize their machine more. If you like your task bar on the left-hand side or at the top, you can do that again. So we're listening to customer feedback, continuously improving Windows. And you'll see those updates as Windows just gets better as the updates come through. And then all of this is, of course, needs security and the underpinning there. So we continue to innovate on the security capabilities of Windows with secured core PCs and secure [ enclaves ] on the motherboard as well. So lots of innovation happening, and we continue to invest. One of the big areas that we're talking about now is AI and what we can do for unmeeted intelligence. And so if you think about it, we talk about unmeeted intelligence on every desk and in every home. And if you remember when Bill Gates was the boss of Microsoft, it was about a PC on every desk and every home.