The Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank (上海商銀) appeared to have outperformed most of its financial peers, including 14 mega bank rivals, by announcing yesterday the highest bank cash dividend of NT$1.1 per share and a stock dividend of NT$0.4 per share.
“Amid the recent financial crisis, we did pretty well last year and decided to reward [investors] with dividends, which few financial rivals are paying this year,” bank chairman Yung Hung-ching (榮鴻慶) told a shareholders’ meeting yesterday.
The bank yesterday reported NT$5.46 billion (US$162 million) in after-tax income, or NT$2.32 per share — one of the best performances in the sector.
For the first quarter of this year, the bank reported a worse-than-expected after-tax earnings of NT$1.24 billion, or NT$0.53 per share, as a result of narrowed net interest margin and a declining wealth management business, the bank’s statement said.
Yung, who was re-elected as bank chairman, vowed yesterday to accelerate plans to branch into China by upgrading its liaison office in Suzhou into a branch once a cross-strait memorandum of understanding (MOU) is inked.
Meanwhile, Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行) yesterday decided to pay no dividends this year, its exchange filing said yesterday.
For the first time since its founding in 2001, Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) recently also said it would not pay a dividend for this year, followed by seven other financial holding companies including Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控).
Among the remaining rivals, Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控), First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) and Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) paid combined dividends of NT$1, NT$0.75 and NT$0.5 respectively.
E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) announced it would pay a stock dividend of NT$0.3 while Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) and Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) pay a cash dividend of NT$0.25 and NT$0.18 respectively.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by