Amid the outbreak of a chain of financial scandals that had cast a shadow over the local bourse, a Taipei-based credit assessing firm yesterday listed 23 industries with weak financial conditions that investors need to know about.
The five industries categorized as needing the most vigilance included wool textiles, construction and land development, metalworking, hotels and ceramics manufacturing, according to a survey by the China Credit Information Service Ltd (
The wool textile industry yielded six worrying cases, including Chuwa Wool Industry Co (中和羊毛), while construction and land development had 66 cases, like Huaku Construction Co (華固建設), said Liu Jen (劉任), editor-in-chief at China Credit.
As many as 29 companies were listed in the metalworking industry, such as Taichung Machinery Works Co (台中精機), whereas 17 hotels, including Formosa International Hotels Corp (晶華酒店) and 11 ceramics companies, including bathroom-equipment maker Hocheng Corp (和成), were also surveyed, Liu said.
The survey was conducted based on last year's financial books of 2,604 listed and non-listed companies that were divided into 182 industries.
The assessment used 14 indices, including capital utilization, mobility of assets and debts, capability for growth, profitability, liquidation ability for short-term debts, inventory and account receivables.
"The economic rebounds help only a few star industries' performances but not the financial health of all the industries," the company said in a statement, adding that the performances of up to eight indices, such as net income ratio and turnover rate of account receivables, had deteriorated this year compared with last year.
The listed companies that were said to have problematic finances were also found to have less-than-ideal assessment results, China Credit said.
A series of scandals on the local bourse forced the nation's financial regulators to enhance its substantial examination of semi-annual financial reports of up to 170 publicly listed companies this year, in a bid to include as many potentially problematic companies as possible.
Companies that had poorer-than-expected performances, such as Elitegroup Computer Systems Co (
Information technology and electronics industry players like personal-computer makers and wired communications equipment makers did not perform well in account receivables, China Credit said.
"Companies that have overly high unpaid accounts deserve investors' scrutiny," the company said.
Game software, integrated circuit design, semiconductors, wireless communication equipment and the data storage manufacturing sectors were rated as the industries with the best performance, in light of their strong capability for growth and liquidation of short-term debts, high mobility, profitability and low inventory level, according to the survey.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by