AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) has suspended production at a plant, which makes polysilicon used in solar wafer manufacturing, in Japan and is assessing potential quake damage to supply chains in the LCD panel industry, the company said.
The Hsinchu-based company said in a statement on Saturday that its manufacturing facilities had not been damaged and there had been no casualties at its Japanese solar-wafer unit, M.Setek Co, in Fukushima Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the magnitude 8.9 earthquake on Friday.
M.Setek produces polysilicon and solar wafers in Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture, both of which are key raw materials for making solar cells. AUO has in recent years expanded into the solar power business, aiming to gain a foothold in the fast-growing green energy market.
AUO has about 800 employees in Japan, with about 700 working at M.Setek, chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) said yesterday on the sidelines of a job fair in Taipei.
“The [M.Setek] plant was not hit by the tsunami, but ... because of a lack of water and electricity, it is not operational at the moment,” local cable TV network UBN quoted Lee as saying yesterday.
The company downplayed the potential financial impact from the production suspension, adding that M.Setek contributed just 0.3 percent of AUO’s NT$102.62 billion consolidated revenue in the fourth quarter of last year.
As for the possible knock-on effect on the LCD panel industry, Lee said there would certainly be an impact in terms of the upstream supply chain, but that an accurate assessment would require more time.
“We have alternative sources of chemical materials,” Lee said, hinting that the earthquake has had a limited impact on the company’s flat-panel business.
US market researcher IHS iSuppli said on Friday that the earthquake would affect the production of components for LCD panels — including glass, color filters, polarizers, cold cathode fluorescent lamps and light-emitting diodes — as Japanese suppliers play an important role in this line of business.
Meanwhile, Lee said yesterday the company would re-apply to the Investment Commission for permission to change its Chinese investment plan, after the government announced on March 8 that it would allow Taiwanese LCD makers to buy a stake in or merge with Chinese counterparts, as well as invest in Chinese fabs using the same level of technology they currently employ in Taiwan.
In December, the company won government approval to invest US$3 billion in a 7.5-generation fab in Kunshan, China.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHEN MEI-YING
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS