Yulon Motor Co (
Fourth-quarter net income fell to NT$870 million (US$27.4 million), from 2003's NT$1.36 billion. The fourth-quarter number was derived by subtracting nine-month profit of NT$4.63 billion from the unaudited full-year profit figure by Yulon Motor.
"China's attempts to cool its economy caused a sudden slowdown in demand," Yulon's Vice President Charles Shiau (
Like other carmakers, the profit margin of Yulon's China business was squeezed last year from declining sales and the increasing cost of steel plates. The growth pace of China's car sales, which rose 50 percent in 2002 and 76 percent in 2003, dropped to 15 percent last year.
Increasing competition had forced carmakers to slash prices, encouraging customers to postpone their purchases on anticipation of further discounts.
The price of steel sheets used in car assemblies rose, with increasing demand for the metal from China.
Yulon's shares rose 2.7 percent to a 10-day high of NT$37.8 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, before the carmaker's financial results were announced.
Yulon Motor's profit last year fell 29 percent to NT$5.5 billion, from NT$7.78 billion in 2003, Shiau said.
The company's profit from its venture with Dongfeng Motor Corp (
Yulon makes Nissan's Sunny compact cars and Teana luxury sedans with Dongfeng.
For this year, Yulon is forecasting a 10.7 percent sales growth to NT$45.5 billion from NT$41.1 billion last year, according to its Jan. 13 forecast.
The company is aiming to sell 72,700 cars this year, 22 percent more than the 71,100 units sold last year, Shiau said.
Pretax profit for the year may fall to NT$5 billion, based on a "conservative" estimate, Shiau said. Yulon is expecting to pay 10 percent of the pretax income as taxes, he said.
Yulon sold NT$600 million worth of shares in Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產) in December to spin off the marketing unit. The sale let Yulon become a contract manufacturer for Nissan's rivals, including General Motors Corp, without marketing for competing brands.
GM, the world's largest automaker, on Jan. 10 said it would invest NT$2 billion with Yulon to assemble Buick sedans in Taiwan. The venture will begin making cars next year.
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
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
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