Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), the nation’s biggest diversified industrial company, expects this year’s profit to remain at last year’s levels as Chinese demand for petrochemicals offsets any impact from the debt crisis in Europe.
“We can maintain this year’s earnings around last year’s levels,” William Wong (王文淵), chairman of the executive board, said at FPG unit Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp’s (台灣化纖) annual shareholders’ meeting in Taipei yesterday. “China’s expanding economy will bolster Asian demand for petrochemicals.”
Formosa Chemicals reported a net income of NT$29.4 billion (US$914 million) last year, the Changhua-based company said in a stock exchange filing on March 19. The company posted a profit of NT$6.1 billion in 2008.
Formosa Chemicals plans to expand the combined capacity of its three aromatics plants to 3.73 million tonnes a year, from 3.5 million tonnes, company president Hong Fu-yuan (洪福源) told reporters yesterday, without giving a timeframe. The units produce benzene, paraxylene and orthoxylene, used to make computer casings, polyester fiber, dyes and insecticides.
The company is seeking approval from the Taiwanese and Chinese governments to build a 1.5 million-tonne-a-year pure terephthalic acid (PTA) plant in Ningbo, China, Hong said. The chemical is used to make fibers and plastic bottles.
It currently has a capacity to produce 600,000 tonnes of PTA in Ningbo a year, he said.
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San