TSMC announces sales drop
The world's largest contract microchip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), said its sales last month came in at NT$26.18 billion (US$808 million), down 4.5 percent from the NT$27.42 billion in December last year.
However, the January sales rose 25.6 percent from a year earlier, TSMC said.
TSMC had earlier warned that it expects sequential declines in both sales and profit margins in the first quarter to March as a result of seasonal as well as exchange-rate factors.
First-quarter sales are expected to drop to NT$73 to NT$76 billion from NT$81.16 billion in the fourth quarter last year.
"Other than seasonal weakness, the New Taiwan dollar's recent appreciation is expected to cost TSMC 4 percent of its sales in the current quarter," TSMC chief financial officer Lora Ho (何麗梅) said.
TSMC expects its gross margin in the current quarter to decline to 46-48 percent from 49.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005, with operating margin seen falling to 39 percent from 42.2 percent.
Advantest petitions court
Advantest Corp, the world's biggest maker of memory-chip testing equipment, said that it had petitioned a Taiwanese court to prevent a South Korean rival from selling and importing testers to the nation because of patent violations.
Tokyo-based Advantest made the filing to the Hsinchu District Court against South Korea's TechWing Inc, according to a faxed release yesterday. TechWing's memory testers violated three of Advantest's patents, the Japanese company said.
Advantest said it filed a suit against TechWing in South Korea in December 2004 to stop sales and is seeking damages for violating its patents. The case is pending, Advantest said.
Bad debts hit local banks
The spiraling problem of consumer bad debts has seriously dented local banks' profitability, halving the total pre-tax income of local banks to NT$78.6 billion last year from NT$155.3 billion in 2004, which marked the largest drop in profits ever, according to preliminary figures of the Banking Bureau.
Up to 13 out of 46 local banks incurred pre-tax losses, including Chang Hwa Bank (彰化銀行) and Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀) that saw a deficit of over NT$10 billion after making tens of billions of provision expenses last year, the figures showed.
Total reserves of local banks to cover defaulted loans more than tripled to NT$243 billion last year from NT$78.1 billion in 2004, according to the Financial Supervisory Commission's statistics.
The surge in provision was caused by the snowballing bad debts of credit and cash card lending as well as the new definition of non-performing loans to halve the default period to 90 days that took effect last July.
Bank of Taiwan head announced
The Ministry of Finance announced on Thursday that Hsu Teh-nan (許德南), president of Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控), will chair the Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行). The state-run bank's chairmanship was left vacant after Joseph Lyu (呂桔誠) was appointed as finance minister last month.
Hsu, 63, served as president of Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), executive vice president at Lank Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) and general manager at the Bank of Taiwan.
NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, gaining NT$0.153 to close the day at NT$32.267.
A total of US$971 million changed hands during the day's trading.
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