Formosa mulls oil in China
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the oil-refining unit of the nation's largest industrial group, has sent senior executives to China to evaluate potential oil field investments, a local newspaper said, without citing anyone.
China National Petroleum Corp (中石油集團), parent of Hong Kong-listed PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣), has asked Formosa whether it would consider taking part in oil and gas exploration projects in northeastern China, the newspaper said.
Formosa Petrochemical also plans to seek contracts to convert crude oil into fuels for China National Petroleum, the paper said.
Formosa Petrochemical, which buys all its crude oil from overseas, plans to reduce its reliance on imports to help cut costs and boost profit, the paper reported. Taiwan imports almost all its crude oil needs.
Asian carriers expect big profits
Singapore Airlines Ltd, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd and other Asian carriers may report a combined profit of US$3.2 billion this year, helped by cost cuts and traffic gains, UBS Warburg predicted.
Asian airlines will beat their rivals in other regions for a second year running, with European carriers probably reporting combined net income of US$2.6 billion and U.S. carriers losing US$4.5 billion, the investment bank said. Still, traffic gains in Asia are slowing, said Tim Ross, an airline analyst at UBS Warburg.
"If you look at passenger and cargo demand, while they won't turn negative, the rate of growth is slowing," Ross said at a transport briefing on Monday. "The economic cycle isn't turning as fast as economists previously expected."
Shares of Asian carriers outperformed their rivals last year, helped by more travel within the region and rising cargo shipments from China.
While expecting Asian carriers' shares to show a "short-term rally" in the event of war in Iraq, Ross said he preferred stocks of airport operators or service providers such as Beijing Capital International Airport Co and Singapore Airport Terminal Services Ltd.
The growing Chinese market and expansion of low-frills carriers would help airport operators as the volume of travelers increases, Ross said.
EVA posts sales increase
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) said sales last month rose 14.9 percent from the same period a year ago.
Sales rose to NT$5 billion (US$144.5 million) from NT$4.35 billion in February last year, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan stock exchange. However, last month's sales fell from the NT$5.89 billion posted in January.
Trade talks open with UK
The 2003 Taiwan-Britain trade talks organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Britain's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), began yesterday at the the ministry, sources with the British Trade and Cultural Office in Taipei said.
Richard Carden, director-general of the DTI's Europe and World Trade section is leading the British delegation, while Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘).
On the agenda are the Doha Development Agenda under the framework of the Doha Round of the WTO, as well as the future of bilateral trade cooperation.
NT dollar dips
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, dropping NT$0.023 to close at NT$34.620 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$490 million.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to