The nation’s biggest solar cell maker, Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), expects to swing back to profit this quarter as demand recovers after some countries, such as the US and Japan, resumed subsidies for solar installations amid a recovering economy, a company executive said yesterday.
The strong rebound in the fourth quarter may help turn 2009 into a profitable year, Motech chief executive officer Norman Shen (沈楨林) told an investor conference.
“We believe Motech’s operation will improve significantly from next quarter after hitting the bottom in the second quarter,” Shen said. “The fourth quarter will be the best quarter this year in terms of sales and gross margin .... Factory utilization will be full.”
Japan, the US and European countries such as Germany and Italy would be the main growth areas as their governments recently decided to subsidize solar installations again, Shen said.
Motech accumulated losses of NT$389 million (US$11.95 million) in the first nine months of the year as prices plunged more than 60 percent year-on-year to about US$1.30 per watt because of overcapacity and dwindling demand.
Prices are forecast to stabilize over the next five quarters, Shen said.
Shen expects the recovery to carry over into next year and plans to boost production capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt next year, from 600 megawatts this year to cope with rising demand. That would mean an aggressive increase in capital spending from this year’s NT$3 billion.
Motech plans to raise funds for the expansion in the first half of next year, Shen said.
Local rival E-Tone Solar Tech Co Ltd (益通光能) shared Motech’s optimisim.
“I don’t see major negative factors ahead ... I believe drastic price declines will spur demand,” E-Tone financial executive Lo Lai-hwang (羅來煌) said.
Lo said US demand looked strong as the administration of US President Barack Obama pushed hard for a green energy policy.
E-Tone plans to spend NT$1.5 billion to build new two new production lines next year, which will boost capacity by about 37 percent to 440 megawatts next year. Its estimated capital spending for this year is NT$1.62 billion.
The company expects quarterly earnings to grow further this quarter after returning to the black in the third quarter, during which it earned NT$85.38 million.
On a full-year basis, however, it expects to remain in the red, with cumulative losses in the first nine months reaching NT$564 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