China Airlines Co (
"We are quite optimistic about making a profit this year," spokesman Roger Han (韓梁中) said at a Taipei Foreign Correspondents' Club meeting.
"We have very strong cargo operations and strong outbound traffic," Han said, without providing specific figures.
The outbreak of SARS led to a slump in travel demand in the second quarter, hurting one of China Airlines' most profitable routes -- the one between Taiwan and Hong Kong -- and prompting Asian airlines to cut more than 1,150 weekly flights.
Cargo, which usually makes up about half of the carrier's total revenue, accounted for about 60 percent of total revenue in May when the passenger travel slump was at its worst, Han said.
The company isn't considering "drastic" cost-cutting measures, he said.
The carrier, which ordered 22 aircraft last December, said the delivery schedule was on track and it would buy as many as 70 engines, including spares. Each engine typically costs between US$2.5 million and US$4.5 million.
Chairman Lee Yun-ling (李雲寧) said the carrier will select engines for 18 of the aircraft in two to three weeks. The bidders are Pratt & Whitney, General Electric Co and Rolls-Royce Group Plc.
The company earlier reported first-quarter net income of NT$456.9 million (US$13.3 million), without providing a year-earlier comparison. In the first half of last year, it earned NT$1.3 billion and NT$3.1 billion for all of last year.
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