Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技), the nation’s largest solar wafer maker, yesterday reported its highest quarterly net profit in seven quarters, helped by strong demand for solar system installations in Europe.
Net income surged 71 percent to NT$409 million (US$12.8 million), or NT$2.22 per share, from NT$224 million, or NT$1.41 a share, in the first quarter, the company’s financial statement said.
A year ago, Green Energy lost NT$160 million as demand plunged amid the global financial crisis and prices dived on oversupply.
Second-quarter sales jumped 12.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, more than double the same period last year, to NT$3.71 billion.
This year’s solar supply chain volatility comes amid a doubling of new photovoltaic system installations, market research firm iSuppli said in a report last week.
Worldwide photovoltaic installations are projected to rise to 14.2 gigawatts this year, up from 7.2 gigawatts last year, iSuppli forecast.
To cope with growing demand, Green Energy’s board in May approved a budget of NT$1.46 billion for solar wafer expansion and equipment purchases, and an additional investment of US$37.22 million in Ultra Energy (Weifang) Technology (宇駿濰坊), a new wafer slicing subsidiary, in China’s Shandong Province.
Shares of Green Energy leaped 2.75 percent to NT$86, beating the benchmark TAIEX, which gained 0.63 percent yesterday.
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