Gintech Energy Corp (昱晶能源), one of the nation’s biggest solar cell makers, expects net income to remain at a high level this quarter on the back of sustained demand, a company executive said yesterday.
Strong demand has helped most solar companies’ factories run at full capacity and lifted prices over the past two quarters as solar-cell system installations increased before new but lower subsidies from last year for the solar photovoltaics system in Germany — the world’s biggest solar panel market — and other European countries, took effect in the middle of this year.
THIRD QUARTER KEY
“We believe the third quarter will be a very good quarter for us ... Net profits will be no less than the previous two quarters,” company president Wenwhe Pan (潘文輝) said.
“We are on the road to making total net profits that equal our share capital in the first three quarters,” he said.
Based on Pan’s forecast, Gintech is likely to post more than NT$1 billion (US$31.45 million) in net income this quarter after deducting the NT$1.04 billion and NT$999 million it earned in the first and second quarters from the company’s NT$3.19 billion in share capital.
SHIPMENTS TO RISE
Shipments would rise 11 percent to about 225 megawatts (MW) in the current quarter, from last quarter’s 202MW, Pan said.
Gross margin would be flat from last quarter’s 19.3 percent, he said.
“However, November will be a turning point,” Pan said.
Demand is expected to weaken, as people tend not to install solar panel systems during the Christmas holiday season because of cooler weather, Pan said.
The weakness is expected to worsen in the first quarter of next year as aggressive capacity expansion from its global peers could cause oversupply and price decline, he said.
“The first quarter will be a very challenging period [for the industry],” Pan said. “However, we are okay with orders in the fourth and first quarter of next year.”
Gintech planned to cut price to secure orders beginning in December, Pan said.
“I won’t be surprised by about a cut of 5 to 10 percent [compared with the third quarter],” he said.
SLOWING GROWTH
The overall solar cell industry is expected to experience a slower growth next year, Gintech chairman Wenent Pan (潘文炎) said.
The market would grow 21 percent to 17 gigawatts (GW), from 14GW this year, he projected.
This year, the market could balloon 92 percent from last year’s 7.3GW, he said.
For Gintech, shipments are expected to more than double to 800MW this year and to rise a further 50 percent to 1.2GW next year, the chairman said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six