Rising steel prices and increased sales offset a surge in raw material costs to boost China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s largest and only integrated steelmaker, which posted a 36.52 percent increase in profits quarter-on-quarter for the second quarter of the year.
Pre-tax profit totaled NT$9.99 billion (US$345.1 million) from April to last month, up NT$2.67 billion from NT$7.32 billion in the previous quarter, the Siaogang District (小港), Greater Kaohsiung-based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
“A bigger increase in selling prices, compared with cost -increases, and an increase in the volume of steel product sales resulted in a growth in profits,” China Steel said in the statement.
However, second-quarter profit fell 30.3 prcent from NT$14.33 billion posted a year earlier because of raw material price hikes, company data showed.
In the first six months of the year, pre-tax income reached NT$17.3 billion, down 36.95 percent from NT$27.45 billion a year earlier, according to the company’s tallies.
With 13.57 billion issued shares, pre-tax earnings per share was NT$1.27 in the first half.
Revenue in the second quarter rose by NT$7.12 billion, or 12.6 percent, to NT$63.63 billion from the previous quarter, the -company said.
Year-on-year, second--quarter revenue was up 7.36 percent from NT$59.27 billion for the same period last year, while first-half revenue rose 6.78 percent to NT$120.13 billion, according to the company’s data.
Citigroup Global Markets analyst Timothy Chen said the company’s pretax profit was 8 percent below Citigroup’s forecast.
China Steel’s second-quarter performance came after the company adjusted upward its quarterly steel prices for domestic clients by NT$2,811 per tonne, or 12.1 percent, to reflect rising raw material costs.
However, on May 26 and July 13, China Steel announced a total of 5.88 percent cut in prices for third-quarter contracts for domestic customers, prompting worries about its profitability for this quarter.
"We forecast gross margin to fall from 15 percent in the second quarter to 7 percent in the third quarter due to falling prices and rising material costs," Chen wrote in a note yesterday.
Shares in China Steel closed 1.27 percent higher at NT$32 yesterday before the release of its quarterly figures. The stock has risen 5.07 percent since the beginning of the year, compared with a decline of 4.43 percent on the benchmark TAIEX over the same period, stock exchange tallies showed.
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
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],”