Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技), the nation’s second-biggest solar wafer maker by revenue, yesterday posted record revenue for last month as increasing solar installations in Europe and Asia boosted prices and shipments.
Revenue rose 1 percent to NT$1.53 billion (US$48 million) from NT$1.52 billion in July, or almost a 68 percent increase from NT$914 million a year ago, the company said.
“Customer demand is growing not only in Europe, but in Asia as well. We have slightly increased prices and capacity to cope with the market situation,” company spokesperson Christine Chen (陳婷婷) said by telephone.
Shipments increased further last month after growing almost two-fold in July from the previous year on full equipment utilization.
The company’s results came after its larger rival, Gintek Energy Corp (昱晶能源), reported on Monday that its revenue last month grew 6.58 percent month-on-month and double the same period last year to NT$2.59 billion.
To cope with increasing demand, Green Energy plans to allocate a bigger share, or 40 percent, of its total shipments to its contract business, up from the 30 percent it estimated earlier this year. In the first half of this year, the contract business, which has a higher gross margin, accounted for about 11 percent of overall shipments.
“Green Energy is modifying its product mix and customer structure,” the Taoyuan-based company said in an e-mailed statement.
Green Energy aims to increase its capacity to 1 gigawatt next quarter, from 360 megawatts at the end of last year. The company raised US$90 million by issuing global depository receipts last week and another NT$2.66 billion in syndicated bank loans to fund the capacity expansion.
The company said that net profit in July grew about 4.5 times to NT$162 million, or NT$0.92 per share, from a year earlier.
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