Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技), the nation’s biggest solar wafer maker, yesterday said revenues grew 8 percent last month as demand bounced back amid falling inventory.
Revenues expanded to NT$1.46 billion (US$50.73 million) last month amid rising shipments from NT$1.27 billion the month before, according to the company’s statement. On an annual basis, last month’s revenues increased nearly 15 percent from NT$1.27 billion.
That brought Green Energy’s second-quarter revenues to NT$5.18 billion, down more than 20 percent from NT$6.51 billion in the first quarter.
Recovering demand brought the company’s equipment utilization back to full capacity at the end of last month after falling to 80 percent in May.
Weak European demand in the first half of this year caused a spike in global solar module inventories, market researcher Solarbuzz said in a report on Thursday.
Inventories are expected to reach a record 8.6 gigawatts by the end of the second quarter, with upstream inventories, such as polysilicon, increasing 36 percent, Solarbuzz said.
Yesterday, local solar module maker Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光能源) said revenues inched up to NT$1.77 billion last month from NT$1.75 billion in May. Neo Solar accumulated NT$5.12 billion in revenues during the second quarter, down about 30 percent from NT$7.26 billion in the first quarter.
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
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