Hon Hai units see shares rise
Shares of Hon Hai Group’s (鴻海集團) telecom equipment manufacturing subsidiaries rose yesterday after the National Communications Commission (NCC) approved the group’s plan to buy equipment overseas to set up base stations for its 4G network.
Among the Hon Hai units, Microelectronics Technology Inc (台揚) shares gained 7 percent to close NT$19.05, Tai Tung Communication Co (台通) added 6 percent to NT$68.90 and CyberTAN Technology Inc (建漢) rose 1.75 percent to NT$31.95, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) ended up 0.97 percent at NT$104 in Taipei trading.
Giga posts record revenue
Giga Solar Materials Corp (碩禾), a provider of conductive materials for solar cells, yesterday said its revenue rose 4.46 percent last month from May to hit a record NT$778.8 million (US$26 million). Last month’s figure was 137.74 percent higher than a year earlier, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Revenue from January to last month totaled NT$4.23 billion, increasing 94.63 percent from the same period last year, the filing showed.
Sales up for clothing group
Makalot Industrial Co (聚陽), a diversified garment manufacturer for global brands and major clothing retailers, yesterday said that monthly sales rose 5.53 percent to NT$1.49 billion last month from May, but edged down 0.22 percent from a year earlier.
Makalot’s cumulative revenue from January through last month totaled NT$9.57 billion, representing a 13.63 percent year-on-year rise, Makalot said.
Bulk shipper sees annual rise
Wisdom Marine Lines Co Ltd (慧洋海運), one of the nation’s major bulk shippers, yesterday posted NT$723.08 billion in sales for last month, down 4.35 percent from May, but up 4.42 percent from June last year, the company’s stock exchange filing showed.
For the first half of the year, Wisdom Marine saw its cumulative sales rise 7.39 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.34 billion, the company said.
Fubon to sponsor LPGA event
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) will sponsor the Taiwan leg of the LPGA tour through 2016, it said yesterday.
The Fubon LPGA Taiwan Championship is to be held at Linkou Miramar Golf Country Club in New Taipei City from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, with 81 players to compete for a total purse of US$2 million, organizers said.
Tournaments since 2011 had been hosted by the Sunrise Golf and Country Club in Taoyuan County under a three-year contract with the US-based LPGA, but Sunrise chairman Hsu Tien-ya (許典雅) decided to end sponsorship over financial considerations.
New flight route announced
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, yesterday launched direct flights to Yantai City in China’s Shangdong Province, flying every Monday and Thursday from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
Yantai and three other new routes to Changchun, Hefei and Xuzhou have been added to the airline’s cross-strait network to provide passengers more flexible flight options, CAL chairman Sun Huang-hsiang (孫洪祥) said.
SinaPac expanding in China
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) yesterday opened a financial leasing company in Tianjin, China.
Alongside a Nanjing subsidiary that opened in 2011, the new unit is expected to broaden SinoPac Financial’s leasing business coverage from southern China to the north and even into the northeast, the company said.
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
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