Wintek revenue rises annually
Wintek Corp (勝華), which supplies touchpanels for Xiaomi Corp (小米) smartphones, as well as for Amazon Inc and Google Inc tablets, yesterday reported that its revenue fell last month from June, but rose annually.
Wintek’s revenue declined 5 percent to NT$6.54 billion (US$218 million) last month from June, but rose 17.1 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
In the first seven months of the year, its cumulative revenue totaled NT$43.66 billion, up 4.8 percent from the same period last year, the company said.
KTB reports monthly profit
King’s Town Bank (KTB, 京城銀行) yesterday reported net profit of NT$452.88 million for last month, with earnings per share of NT$0.38, according to a company filing with the stock exchange.
The Greater Tainan-based lender said its net profit for the first seven months of the year was NT$3.34 billion, or NT$2.78 per share.
The bank said it still held quality assets as of the end of last month, with a lower-than-average non-performing loan ratio of 0.04 percent and a loan coverage ratio of 1.52 percent.
Formosa bond issuance set
The Hong Kong branch of Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (中國農業銀行) plans to issue 2 billion yuan (US$323 million) in yuan-denominated bonds in Taiwan tomorrow, the GRETAI Securities Market announced yesterday.
The Chinese bank plans to issue 1.7 billion yuan in three-year yuan-denominated bonds, or Formosa bonds, at a yield of 3.4 percent and 0.3 billion yuan in five-year bonds at 3.8 percent with Taiwanese underwriter CTBC Bank (中信銀行), Dow Jones Newswires quoted a GRETAI official as saying yesterday.
Bank pegs GDP growth at 3.9%
Standard Chartered Bank forecast the nation’s economy to grow 3.9 percent economic this year, after GDP grew 3.84 percent annually in the second quarter — the highest rate in six quarters.
In May, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics projected a 2.98 percent increase in GDP this year.
Second-quarter economic data suggest that the nation’s recovery “is gaining momentum and overall growth is expected to pick up even more in the second half” of the year, Tony Phoo (符銘財), a Taipei-based economist at the UK bank, wrote in a research report last week.
LED sector’s future bright: firm
The global LED lighting market is set to continue growing this year amid the rising popularity of the industry’s products, a market information advisory firm has forecast.
The global market for high-brightness LED products is expected to reach US$14.4 billion this year, up from US$12.4 billion last year, LEDinside said in a research note last week.
The worldwide market is targeted to increase to US$16.6 billion by 2018, with a compound growth rate of 4 percent, the research firm added.
In addition, it forecast that the LED package market value for lighting applications would reach US$4.88 billion and maintain a 34 percent share of the market.
MOF names Land Bank chair
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) president Shiu Kuang-si (徐光曦) has been named Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) chairman, the Ministry of Finance (MOF), said yesterday after appointing him.
State-owned Land Bank is the nation’s largest property lender.
Since Hsu also served as president of the state-run Mega Financial’s banking arm, Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行), that position will now be filled by Mega Bank vice president Beth Wei (魏美玉), the ministry said in a press release.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by