Foxconn Profit Surges in Third Quarter TAIPEI - Shares of Hon Hai Precision Industry of Taiwan jumped Wednesday after Hon Hai, the main manufacturer of Apple products, posted a sharp increase in quarterly net profit, lifted by Apple's new products. But strong early gains were later tempered by investors" caution about Apple's prospects for long-term growth, analysts said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn, the assembler of both the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini, started mass production for the products in late August. Hon Hai also provides electronics to other companies, including Cisco, Dell, Nokia and Sony. The company reported late Tuesday a nine-month profit through September of 57.8 billion Taiwan dollars, or $1.98 billion, 24 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier. Net profit in the July-to-September period was 30.3 billion dollars, according to Reuters and analysts" calculations, up 58 percent from a year earlier. Profits in the quarter were 140 percent higher than in the previous three months. Hon Hai said in a brief statement that it had achieved a notable market share gain "in the midst of the European-led global economic uncertainty and potential industry shrinkage." It did not give further details in a statement late Tuesday to the Taiwan stock exchange or in a subsequent statement Wednesday. Shares of Hon Hai finished Wednesday up 0.7 percent after quickly rising 3.4 percent at the opening of trading. "The rise we saw this morning was not much, given the strong Q3 figures; in fact many foreign investors have been selling Hon Hai shares recently," said Vincent Chen, an analyst at Yuanta Securities. Many foreign investors who bought Hon Hai were buying into Apple's future, but they're now showing concerns over Apple's growth. Last week, Apple delivered a second consecutive quarter of disappointing results and iPad sales fell well short of Wall Street's targets, but investors said they would focus on the year-end holiday quarter. Analysts have generally expected Hon Hai's shipments to Apple to increase in the fourth quarter as the production of the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini becomes more efficient than in the initial production period. Hon Hai's results in the third quarter were also helped by higher subsidies from Apple and a reversed charge of 4.5 billion dollars from investment in Sharp. Hon Hai had agreed to buy 9.9 percent of Sharp in March, but said in August that the two companies had agreed Hon Hai did not have to honor the purchase deal because Sharp's shares had plunged after the March agreement. Although neither Apple nor Foxconn has said what the cost-sharing arrangements, if any, are between the two companies, some analysts assumed that Apple was paying higher fees for the iPhone 5 and also covering part of the cost of rising wages. Foxconn Technology Group, the trading name of Hon Hai, announced in mid-February that it had raised wages for workers in a range of 16 percent to 25 percent. In late March, it reached an agreement with Apple to hire tens of thousands of new workers to reduce overtime work as it fought perceptions that its plants in China were sweatshops. "Foxconn's margin improved owing to Apple's subsidies," said Mr. Chen, the analyst at Yuanta Securities, "but the subsidy level is hard to predict in nature and it may vary each quarter." In a trading note, Kirk Yang, an analyst with Barclays Capital, said he expected fourth-quarter consolidated sales to grow 14 percent from the level of a year ago because of strong shipments of Apple products. Taiwan trims outlook Taiwan cut its growth forecast for 2012 for a ninth time in a year Wednesday as Europe's problems, concerns about the U.S. economy and mainland China's slowdown kept third-quarter growth below forecasts, but bright spots indicated the economy might have bottomed out, Reuters reported in Taipei. The economy grew a preliminary 1.02 percent in the third quarter of 2012 from the same time the previous year, the statistics agency said in a preliminary reading, below the median forecast in a Reuters poll for 1.55 percent growth. But the agency cut its full-year forecast to 1.05 percent from 1.66 percent.