Rising steel prices as a result of strong demand have boosted China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation's largest and only integrated steelmaker, to post a 9.16 percent increase in profits quarter-on-quarter for the second quarter of the year.
Pre-tax profit totaled NT$14.33 billion (US$445.7 million) from April to last month, up NT$1.2 billion from NT$13.13 billion in the previous quarter, the Kaohsiung-based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
"The difference mainly came from an increase in sales prices which resulted in higher gross profits," China Steel said in the statement.
The second-quarter figure also represented a 17.5-fold surge from NT$774.3 million posted a year earlier, company's data showed.
Ahead of yesterday's results, Citigroup analysts forecast China Steel would report NT$13.27 billion in pre-tax profit for the quarter, while Credit Suisse predicted NT$14.96 billion.
China Steel's revenue in the second quarter totaled NT$59.27 billion, up 11.33 percent from NT$53.24 billion in the first quarter. Year-on-year, the increase represents a 61.63 percent rise from NT$36.67 billion for the same period last year, according to company data.
Production output and sales volume, meanwhile, rose 0.5 percent and 2.56 percent to 2.43 million tonnes and 2.49 million tonnes respectively in the second quarter from the previous quarter, company data showed.
China Steel's second quarter performance came after the company adjusted upward its quarterly steel prices for domestic clients by 12.9 percent to reflect rising raw material costs.
In the first six months of the year, pre-tax income reached NT$27.45 billion, up 411.93 percent from a loss of NT$8.8 billion a year earlier. Production output was 4.85 million tonnes and sales volume totaled 4.91 million tonnes in the first half, according to the company's tallies.
However, on Tuesday China Steel announced a 4 percent cut in prices for September contracts for domestic customers, prompting worries about its revenue and profit outlooks for this quarter.
Citigroup Global Markets analysts Peter Kurz and Timothy Chen, however, said the price cuts were well-received by domestic downstream companies.
"Therefore, the third-quarter shipments could be better than we expected," the analysts wrote in a note yesterday.
They forecast China Steel would report 2.2 million tonnes in shipments in the third quarter.
Separately, China Steel said its board yesterday approved several proposals worth NT$21.92 billion to build new facilities and expand capacity, including a plan to spend NT$14.31 billion over three years to build a steel sheet plant. The non-oriented electro-sheet plant will have an annual capacity of 150,000 tonnes, the company said in a stock exchange filing.
The board also agreed to spend NT$5 billion over the next three years to renovate its No. 4 blast furnace after nearly 14 years of service. The furnace will be shut down for six months from the fourth quarter of 2012.
Shares in China Steel fell 0.66 percent to close at NT$30.2 yesterday before the release of its quarterly figures. The stock has plunged 8.48 percent since the beginning of the year, compared with a decline of 6.39 percent on the benchmark TAIEX over the same period, stock exchange tallies showed.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained