Pharmaceutical firm inks deal
Orient EuroPharma Co (OEP, 友華生技), which makes milk powder, drugs, and nutritional supplements, yesterday said that it inked a deal with France-based Laboratoire HRA Pharma, which provides reproductive healthcare products for women, to sell the drug esmya in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau over the next 10 years.
Esmya, which is used to treat uterine fibroids and improve the success rate of operations to remove the growths, was approved in Taiwan in June, OEP said.
About 20 to 50 percent of women have uterine fibroids during childbearing years, the company said.
Taipei building to be auctioned
Shinkong Synthetic Fibers Corp (新光合成纖) plans to auction off its office building in downtown Taipei on Dec. 26, with an asking price of NT$2.42 billion (US$78.26 million), auction organizer Savills Taiwan Ltd (第一太平戴維斯) said.
With 11 floors above ground and one basement floor, the building has 2,144 ping (7,075.2m2) of floor space on a 207.21-ping plot of land on Songjiang Rd, the broker said, adding that full ownership and the convenient location should attract potential buyers.
Taroko sells Happy Year stake
Taroko Textile Corp (大魯閣纖維), which aims to transform itself into an operator of small-sized sports and recreation centers, yesterday said that it sold 100 percent of its stake in Happy Year Investment Ltd, the parent company of Taroko’s textile subsidiary in Shandong, China, to a Chinese company for 115 million yuan (US$18.74 million).
Taroko is expected to book profit of NT$60.92 million in the second and third quarters next year from the transaction, it said, adding that the money would be spent on its recreational business in China and the construction of its Caoyadao shopping center in Greater Kaohsiung.
SMEs trail HK peers: poll
Taiwanese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are lagging behind their Hong Kong peers in digital marketing, according to a survey released by Google Inc yesterday.
The survey found that 62 percent of Taiwanese SMEs use Internet-based marketing tools to reach their customers, compared with 87 percent in Hong Kong.
However, Taiwanese SMEs have the highest hopes of revenue growth next year, the survey showed.
The survey collected 307 valid samples earlier this year from marketing decisionmakers at Taiwanese companies that employ fewer than 100 people. It did not give a margin of error.
Evergreen to expand service
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) is set to expand its Asia-East Africa shipment services next month through collaboration with France-based CMA CGM and UAE-based Emirates Shipping Line, the nation’s largest container shipping company said yesterday.
The capacity expansion — increasing its Asia-East Africa shipments from one to two per week — is expected to lower the impact of port congestion in East Africa and provide its clients with better services, Evergreen Marine said.
Hon Hai sells GoPro shares
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), on Tuesday reported an investment gain of US$62.84 million from selling shares in video camera maker GoPro Inc.
Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, said in a stock exchange filing that it had disposed of 1.35 million GoPro shares, or a 1.27 percent stake in the US company, between July 1 and Tuesday at prices of between US$24 and US$75.
Hon Hai acquired shares in the US firm in 2012 at US$17.08 per share. Following the sale, Hon Hai still holds a 7.53 percent stake in GoPro, the company said.
BlackBerry woos Apple fans
Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry is wooing Apple customers with a cash offer for trade-ins of iPhones for its new square-screened, keyboard-equipped Passport product.
The promotion, announced on Monday, is set to be available from next month until Feb. 13, in Canada and the US, BlackBerry said.
Customers who trade in their iPhones could receive up to US$400 cash back depending on the model and condition of their trade-in, plus a US$150 gift card, the firm said.
Trade talks with China urged
The government has communicated with Chinese authorities, hoping that the two sides could hold another round of formal talks over the cross-strait trade in goods agreement before the end of this year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Tuesday.
The last round of negotiations was held in Jiaosi Township (礁溪), Yilan County, in September. The next round is expected to be held in China.
Meanwhile, the ministry urged the Legislative Yuan to begin deliberation soon of a draft bill regarding cross-strait agreement supervision, which was proposed by the Executive Yuan in April.
Textile group warns over FTA
A free-trade agreement (FTA) between China and South Korea could cost Taiwan more than NT$10 billion in textile exports per year, assuming that 30 percent of Taiwanese textile exports would be replaced by South Korean products, the Taiwan Textile Federation said yesterday.
The federation said the agreement could grant tariff-free status to 85 percent of textile items exported to the China market by South Korea in the future, hurting Taiwanese exporters of fabrics, yarn and fibers.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to