Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維), which produces aromatics and styrenics, is expected to report a decline in revenue for this quarter from last quarter’s NT$110.82 billion (US$3.69 billion), as raw material supply is expected to diminish, a company executive said.
The firm’s raw material supplier, Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑化), plans to conduct annual maintenance on one of its ethylene plants.
Formosa Petrochemical, the nation’s only listed oil refiner and a major unit of the Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), shut down its third olefin plant, beginning yesterday, for a 45-day maintenance cycle. The closure was announced by Formosa Petrochemical president Tsao Mihn (曹明) on Thursday.
Tsao said the ethylene shipments from the plant would decline by 20 percent this month from a month ago and be down by one-third next month from last month.
However, having completed annual maintenance for its oil refinery facilities in June, Formosa Petrochemical will still strive to post a revenue increase this quarter from NT$219.56 billion last quarter, it said.
“We will try to hold our profit this quarter steady compared with NT$6.41 billion a quarter earlier,” Tsao said.
The company’s utilization rate for its oil refinery facilities is expected to be 100 percent this quarter, which would increase its oil production to close to 540,000 barrels a day this quarter, up from 377,000 barrels a day last quarter, it said.
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, another major unit of the group, said it also is to conduct maintenance for its factory for making paraxylene and oxylene for 45 days beginning next month to cope with the reduced supply for ethylene, and for another factory for making styrene monomer for 45 days, company general manager Hong Fu-yuan (洪福源) told reporters on Thursday.
As a result, between next month and October, the company’s shipments for paraxylene and oxylene are likely to drop by 200,000 tonnes, while shipments for styrene monomer is expected to decline by 90,000 tonnes, Hong said.
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre expects revenue to drop 10 percent, to NT$25 billion, compared with last month and that the decline would extend into next month and October.
Also affected by the scarcity of ethylene, Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑公司), the flagship company of the group, expects its factory utilization to drop to 80 percent this quarter, from 85.3 percent last quarter, company president Jason Lin (林健男) said.
However, it still hopes that this quarter’s revenue would be flat, echoing NT$59.03 billion last quarter, on the back of higher product prices.
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San