Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, reported on Thursday a 19% rise in first-quarter profit versus the same period a year earlier, beating expectations due to strong global demand for AI products. Net profit for January-March for Nvidia's biggest server maker and Apple's top iPhone assembler was T$49.92 billion ($1.58 billion), versus a LSEG consensus estimate of T$48.88 billion. In an earnings release, it stuck to its previous forecast of "strong" growth for revenue this year and said it also saw strong demand for AI servers. The company does not give numeric forecasts. “AI remains the most important growth driver this year," rotating CEO Michael Chiang said on an earnings call. He added that major cloud service providers have recently raised capital expenditure plans for this year.