Gas, diesel prices drop
Domestic retail gasoline and diesel prices will both drop by NT$0.8 per liter today to reflect the slide in global crude prices, state-owned CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and privately run Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) reported yesterday.
After the price drop, CPC’s price for a liter of 98-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$25.2, 95-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$23.7, 92-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$23 and diesel is NT$20.
Gasoline prices fell to their lowest level in 45 months, while the price of diesel fell to its lowest level in 40 months.
Quanta reports Q3 increase
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the world’s largest contract manufacturer of notebook computers, reported an unexpected increase in third-quarter profit, helped by a one-time foreign-exchange gain.
Net income climbed to NT$7.21 billion (US$220 million), or NT$1.98 per share, from NT$5.24 billion a year earlier, or NT$1.51 a share, the Taoyuan-based company said in a statement yesterday. Quanta was expected to post profit of NT$4.63 billion, the median of 10 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
The company posted a foreign-exchange gain of NT$2.13 billion in the third quarter, Quanta said.
Quanta expects PC shipments next year to rise 15 percent to 20 percent from this year, in line with market forecasts. The company, however, cut its PC shipments forecast for this year, expecting shipments of up to 38 million units from the previous 40 million because of the weak market outlook.
Evergreen posts decline
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), Asia’s biggest container-shipping line, posted a 78 percent decline in nine-month profit as the global economic slowdown dampened demand for cargo services.
Net income fell to NT$1.49 billion, or NT$0.48 a share, from NT$6.84 billion, or NT$2.23 a share, the Taipei-based company said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing yesterday.
Next Media may expand
Next Media Ltd (壹傳媒集團), the Hong Kong-listed publisher of the Apple Daily newspaper and Next Magazine, said it was in talks to expand the company’s media business in Taiwan.
No “concrete plans” have been reached in discussions with independent third parties, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange yesterday, without identifying who it was talking to.
The South China Morning Post yesterday reported that Next Media is in talks to buy Taiwan’s China Times for as much as NT$20 billion. The article cited anonymous sources and neither its claims nor similar claims in the Hong Kong Economic Journal were confirmed by the company.
Demand slump hurts Chartered
Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd(許特)the world’s third-largest maker of customized chips, said losses this quarter would mount after posting its biggest deficit in five quarters as demand slumped.
The net loss in the three months ending Dec. 31 may range from US$52 million to US$62 million, the Singapore-based company said yesterday. Chartered had profit of US$5.9 million on sales of US$356.2 million a year earlier.
The third-quarter net loss was US$24.4 million, or US$0.11 per American depositary share, compared with a profit of US$114.8 million, or US$0.40, a year earlier, Chartered said.
The chipmaker expects sales in the current period of US$362 million to US$374 million, the statement said. That’s lower than the US$389 million median analyst estimate. It will update fourth-quarter guidance on Dec. 12.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts