Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技), the nation’s biggest solar wafer maker, yesterday said first-quarter net profits slid 29 percent at a quarterly pace, but pre-tax profits slightly exceeded the company’s forecast.
Net income fell to NT$597 million (US$20.68 million), or NT$2.67 per share, in the first three months of this year, compared with NT$844 million, or NT$4.15 per share, in the fourth quarter of last year. First--quarter earnings more than doubled from NT$224 million, or NT$1.35 per share, earned in the same period last year.
Green Energy said it had booked NT$437 million in impairment costs stemming from the revaluation of its convertible corporate bonds, which was slightly higher than a management estimate of NT$400 million last month.
However, operating income soared 52 percent to NT$1.13 billion last quarter, from NT$745 million in the fourth quarter of last year, underscoring the solar wafer company’s solid outlook for the first quarter.
The Taoyuan-based company said pre-tax profits contracted 20 percent to NT$745 million in the first quarter of this year from NT$928 million the previous quarter, slightly exceeding the NT$711 million in pre-tax profits projected in January.
Gross margins for the first quarter improved to 20.44 percent from 17.47 percent in the previous quarter, beating the company’s forecast of 15.95 percent.
Green Energy said its factories have worked at full capacity over the past seven quarters to cope with customer demand. The company said last month that it planned to expedite a capacity expansion plan by upgrading a plant in Tainan from the 1.5 gigawatts originally planned to 2 gigawatts this quarter.
Green Energy’s strong performance came in the face of an industry-wide downturn as oversupply has started to plague suppliers of solar cells, solar wafers and polysilicon, according to a report by market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技).
TrendForce said solar wafer prices fell 2.97 percent to US$3.33 per unit, according to a report released on Wednesday. Some solar cell makers have considered cutting production to minimize losses after selling prices fell below cost, the report said.
Shares in Green Energy rose 1.8 percent to NT$113 yesterday, while shares in local rival Sino-American Silicon Products Inc (中美矽晶) rallied 2.26 percent to NT$113.
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
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