Shares of the nation's top solar cell makers dropped yesterday after industry watchers issued a caution on the industry's outlook because of a shortage of materials.
Shares of Motech Industries Inc (
"Solar-related companies may see further declines in margins, dragged down by material shortages, despite increased demand for solar energy," JP Morgan analyst Gokul Hariharan said in a report on Friday.
Most solar component makers, excluding material suppliers, saw declining margins in the first quarter, because of the supply scarcity in silicon wafers and more Chinese firms competing in the field, the analyst said.
Motech's profit margins declined to 24.4 percent in the first quarter, down 7.3 percentage points from the earlier three months. It saw sales rise 240 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.5 billion for the first four months.
E-ton's margins also dropped to 16.3 percent in the first quarter from 24.3 percent in the earlier three months. Its revenues, meanwhile, grew 99 percent to NT$1.5 billion in the first four months.
E-ton was fast to dismiss any material shortages by announcing it had sealed a 10-year supply deal yesterday.
Under the pact, the supplier will provide E-ton with 350 megawatts' worth of silicon wafers through the next 10 years, E-ton said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, without specifying the partner or the price.
SinoPac Securities Corp (建華證券) recently said they expect to see a slight easing of the supply shortage.
"With the increase in production capacity and an easing of the supply problem, solar-related companies should see stronger sales momentum this month," SinoPac said in a research note last week.
Motech said on May 9 it had won a new sales deal.
It has signed a contract with Open Energy to supply the US renewable energy company with solar cells, paving the way for Motech's expansion into the US market.
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
RSS