Hon Hai plans GDR
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, plans to sell as many as 370 million new shares overseas.
Hon Hai will seek shareholder approval for the issue of global depositary receipts at its annual shareholders’ meeting on April 16, the Taipei-based company said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
The company will raise as much as NT$21.8 billion (US$650 million) from the share sale, based on the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.
Taishin delays share offer
Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), the nation’s second-worst performing financial stock last year, yesterday postponed a share sale plan after halving the offer.
The company said on Nov. 27 that the board had approved plans to sell 1.4 billion shares in the first quarter to raise funds to boost its capital adequacy ratio.
However, in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, Taishin Financial said it would only offer 700 million new shares at NT$5 each to raise NT$3.5 billion (US$104 million) and would delay the issuance to the second quarter,
Siliconware books losses
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), the nation’s second-largest chip packaging and testing company, said yesterday it booked a loss of NT$2.6 billion (US$77.5 million) to reflect the decline in value of its investments in ChipMOS Technologies (Bermuda) Ltd (南茂科技) and Phoenix Precision Technology Corp (全懋精密).
Siliconware Precision said in a statement it booked a loss of NT$2.14 billion for its holdings in ChipMOS shares, and a loss of NT$454 million for its Phoenix holdings.
Singapore unveils stimulus
The Singaporean government unveiled a multibillion dollar plan to boost spending and cut taxes in a bid to ease the worst recession in the city-state’s history.
The government will lower corporate taxes, subsidize wages, guarantee bank loans and spend more on infrastructure as part of the S$20.5 billion (US$13.6 billion) stimulus package, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in a televised speech yesterday.
The spending surge will widen this year’s fiscal deficit to a record for Singapore and will be partly paid for by tapping S$4.9 billion in reserves, he said.
Singapore on Wednesday slashed its growth forecast for this year, saying the economy could shrink as much as 5 percent as global demand for the country’s exports collapses.
Nokia’s Q4 profit plummets
Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone maker, yesterday reported a nearly 69 percent drop in its fourth-quarter net profit to 576 million euros (US$749 million) amid falling sales and lower prices for its handsets.
Nokia chief executive officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said the global financial crisis had dampened demand for mobile phones, but insisted the company would continue to invest in future growth, although it needed to cut costs.
“We are taking action to reduce overall costs and to preserve our strong capital structure. This is clearly our top priority in the current economic environment,” Kallasvuo said in a statement.
Kallasvuo said the financial crisis had made the macroeconomic situation worse in recent weeks and the company cut its guidance for this year for global mobile device volumes.
Nokia said it now expects such volumes to decline some 10 percent this year from last year’s level compared with its previous forecast of a 5 percent fall.
NetApp tops employers
NetApp tops the list of the 100 best companies to work for, most of which have open positions and are hiring, Fortune magazine said yesterday.
Coming in second on Fortune’s 12th annual list was Edward Jones, followed by Boston Consulting Group. The list was published online on fortune.com/bestcompanies and contained in an issue set to hit newsstands on Monday.
NetApp, based in Sunnyvale, California, provides storage and data management services to businesses.
It employs 5,000 people and topped the list because of its “employee enthusiasm for the legendary egalitarian culture,” Fortune said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six