First Financial Holding Co (第一金控), the nation’s ninth-largest financial service provider by assets, posted NT$12.49 billion (US$412.25 million) in after-tax earnings for last year yesterday, or 17.1 percent year-on-year growth.
Its earning per share (EPS) last year was NT$2.05, up from NT$1.79 in 2006.
In the quarter ending March 31, First Financial also concluded a better-than-expected performance, seeing 31.6 percent quarter-on-quarter growth to NT$3.44 billion in net profits, up from NT$2.62 billion in the fourth quarter last year.
“The company’s organic performance has been satisfactory,” First Financial chairman Michael Chang (張兆順) told investors yesterday, “but we’re anxious to accelerate growth through mergers and acquisitions to expand our assets to become a leading player in the coming years.”
Company assets grew just 3.35 percent to reach NT$1.65 trillion last year from NT$1.6 trillion in 2006.
Subsidiary First Taisec Securities Co’s (一銀證券) year-on-year growth, however, jumped almost fourfold to NT$1.1 billion last year while its fee income-based businesses — including wealth management and bancassurance sales — saw a 53 percent year-on-year growth at the same time.
Anticipating a US economic slowdown, the state-run financial service provider estimates its growth from the wealth management sector may not be as strong, falling to between 15 percent and 20 percent this year, Chang said.
After securing a 10.8 percent growth from loans last year, First Financial expects its loan growth to slow down to between 5 percent and 6 percent this year, he said.
A foreign bank analyst, who requested anonymity, was bullish yesterday on First Financial’s future.
“The company did very well to deliver a higher-than-expected return on equity [ROE] of 12.11 percent — an achievement that is usually expected from private banks, instead of state-run ones,” he said, adding the bank’s interest rate income should climb along with the nation’s rising interest rates after achieving a 10.9 percent growth from net interest income last year.
First Financial has vowed to pursue ROE higher than 15 percent this year while maintaining a payout ratio comparable to last year’s 88.78 percent to shareholders, executive vice president Huang Hsien-chuang (黃獻全) said.
The analyst also said that he was upbeat about the bank’s plan to maximize the value of its outlets because its clients usually have a high level of loyalty to its sales and services.
He said First Financial has also been the least affected by the US subprime crisis, compared to its local peers.
First Financial expects to write down less than NT$200 million this year out of its US$22 million holding in subprime-related investments, or collateralized mortgage obligations, Chang said.
It also cut its loan provision this year to NT$240 million from last year’s NT$300 million.
First Financial has also decided to sell its 240 million shares of Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) on the open market for NT$7.5 per share, based on Chang Hwa share prices late last month.
That sale should net First Financial NT$230 million.
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