A man walks past Foxconn building after a new year prayer in New Taipei City,

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, is expected to report on Thursday that third-quarter profit rose 7% year-on-year on robust demand for artificial intelligence servers.

Last month, the company said third-quarter revenue jumped 20% from a year earlier, beating expectations to post its highest-ever revenue for that quarter on strong sales of AI servers.

Net profit for July-September for Apple's top iPhone assembler likely came in at T$46.3 billion ($1.43 billion), according to an LSEG consensus estimate of 14 analysts.

That would represent a 7.4% increase from the same period a year ago. It would also mark a fifth consecutive quarter of profit growth.

Foxconn said last month it was building in Mexico the world's largest manufacturing facility for bundling Nvidia's GB200 superchips, a key component of the U.S. firm's next-generation Blackwell family computing platform.

Underscoring Foxconn's rosy prospects, October sales hit a record high for the month and the company, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry, has said it expects fourth-quarter revenue to grow year-on-year.

It does not provide numerical guidance.

Foxconn holds its earnings call at 3.00 p.m. in Taipei (0700GMT) on Thursday, where it will also update its outlook for the rest of the year.

Foxconn's shares have surged more than 100% so far in 2024, far outperforming the broader market's 28% gain, thanks to its confident outlook on AI.

($1 = 32.4140 Taiwan dollars)

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)