Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial group, plans to give its employees annual bonuses equal to about four months’ salary this year, as the group’s earnings have increased this year and its outlook for next year remains positive.
“[The bonuses for] this year will definitely be higher than last year and will be about four times our employees’ monthly salaries,” FPG general administration director Ho Shui-wen (侯水文) said at the group’s press conference on Friday.
Bonuses given out earlier this year were a record-low 2.83 times employees’ monthly salaries because all four main units of FPG — Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) and Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化纖) — recorded declining profits last year due to a weakened global economy.
For the first three quarters of the year, the four companies reported profit growth of between 25 percent and 26.87 percent from a year ago, according to the companies’ filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Both Formosa Plastics and Formosa Petrochemical expect their revenues for next quarter to be higher than this quarter, while Nan Ya Plastics and Formosa Chemicals have forecast stable revenues from this quarter.
Formosa Plastics Corp president Jason Lin (林健男) said that the prices of many of its products, such as polychlorinated biphenyl and sodium hydroxide, are on the rise, and that the hikes are likely to continue at least to the end of February next year.
The company is set to expand in Ningbo, China, next year, increasing its production of polyvinylchloride by 70,000 tonnes per year, alcohol ethoxylates by 200,000 tonnes, ethylene vinyl acetate by 72,000 tonnes a year and super-absorbent polymers by 60,000 tonnes.
The company’s steel plant in Fujian Province, China, which has a capacity of 720,000 tonnes a year, will also start operating at full capacity in May, it said.
Formosa Petrochemical president Tsao Mihn (曹明) said he is optimistic about the next quarter since demand for ethylene, propene and butadiene is strong in China, and that while oil supply demands in China, Singapore, South Korea and India are declining, demand for oil in Africa, the Middle East and Indonesia is strong.
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre president Hong Fu-yuan (洪福源) said the company will be affected by fewer work days next quarter, but the economic conditions in China and the US are likely to be better next year, so its revenue will likely remain level this quarter.
The company will expand its capacity for plastics by 400,000 tonnes to 450,000 tonnes a year and for acrylonitrile butadiene styrene by 500,000 tonnes a year by the end of the third quarter next year, Hong said, adding that its capacity for phenol is to rise by 500,000 tonnes a year in the fourth quarter.
Nan Ya chairman Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) said fewer work days in the upcoming quarter will hamper production, but the production volume and price of its ethylene glycol next quarter are likely to be higher than this quarter, which will offset the decline.
Nan Ya’s capacity for a glycerophospholipid of the phosphatidylethanolamine class will increase by 100,000 tonnes a year starting next quarter. The new capacity is expected to generate revenue of NT$5 billion to NT$5.5 billion (US$169 million to US$186 million) a year for the company, Wu 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
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],”