Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) posted its first quarterly profit since its founding six years ago after attracting more subscribers with lower tariffs amid the economic slowdown.
The telecom operator made a net profit of NT$401 million (US$12.19 million) in the April-to-June quarter, after deducting the first-quarter figure from its reported first-half earnings of NT$331 million.
The company also made a profit of NT$126 million last month, it said in a statement.
That was further evidence that Asia Pacific Telecom could be on track to attaining its goal of making a total of NT$720 million for the full year, as it slowly emerges from a web of financial scandals involving its former chairwoman, Wang Chin She-ying (王金世英), who fled the country after allegations of embezzlement in 2007.
More than 2.1 million people have signed up with Asia Pacific Telecom, the company said.
The company declined to comment, however, on speculation that it was in talks with Deutsche Bank, which was said to be interested in purchasing a stake in exchange for the NT$4.6 billion debt that Asia Pacific owed the bank.
Asia Pacific Telecom spokesperson Esther Chang (張瓊文) said that the company’s directors did not touch on the issue of introducing new investors by issuing more shares during a board meeting yesterday.
The company has NT$3.28 billion in share capital.
Asia Pacific Telecom’s biggest shareholder is the Taiwan Railway Administration, which holds 12 percent.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day