Cathay partners with Maybank
Cathay Securities Corp (國泰綜合證券), a securities trading arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Malaysia’s Maybank Kim Eng Securities Ltd, to expand its securities business cooperation in Asia.
The two sides are to start their collaboration in foreign brokerage, before extending the cooperation to asset and wealth management, underwriting and new product design, Cathay Securities said in a statement.
Cathay Financial president Lee Chang-ken (李長庚) said Southeast Asia is an important market because the financial strength of the ASEAN has been rising significantly in recent years.
Maybank Group is the largest financial services group in Malaysia and the fourth-largest in Southeast Asia, with its total assets exceeding US$150 billion.
Ningbo Mega branch approved
State-run Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行) yesterday said it has obtained approval from China to set up a branch in the Chinese city of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, which could start operating in April next year.
It is set to be the lender’s second branch in China, as Mega Bank seeks to deepen its presence across the Taiwan Strait. The new branch aims to service more than 2,000 Taiwanese firms in Ningbo city, the lender said in a statement.
LNG, LPG prices set to drop
State-run refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) has lowered prices for both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) this month to reflect declining global oil prices.
Effective this week, CPC cut the price per cubic meter of LNG by 8.33 percent on average from last month, saying that an average consumption of between 30 and 45 cubic meters per month would mean an additional saving of between NT$44.1 and NT$66.15 (US$1.42 and US$2.13) for each household, according to a press release.
Prices for household LPG are to drop by NT$1.65 per kilogram and by NT$0.9 per liter for LPG used in cars, CPC said.
As a result, the price of a 20kg household gas cylinder would drop by NT$33, the company said.
Revenue drops for Wintek
Financially troubled touchpanel maker Wintek Corp (勝華) yesterday said its revenue plunged 67.99 percent last month from a year ago and 52.67 percent from the previous month, as the company is restructuring its business amid falling orders and intensifying competition.
Consolidated revenue was NT$2.73 billion last month, bringing the company’s total revenue for the first 11 months of this year to NT$63.08 billion, down 8.41 percent from the same period last year, Wintek said.
On Monday, the company announced it would cut 610 jobs in its latest restructuring.
Yageo consolidated sales up
Yageo Corp (國巨), the nation’s largest passive components maker, yesterday said its consolidated sales rose to NT$2.15 billion last month, up 9.7 percent from a year earlier and 1.5 percent from the previous month, as the slow season sapped sales in the Asia-Pacific region, while demand in the Greater China region, Europe and North America grew steadily.
Sales in the first 11 months of the year increased to NT$25.08 billion, 9.7 percent higher than the same period a year ago, Yageo said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Ichia to follow steady course
Handset keypad maker Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉) is expected to maintain relatively flat growth in revenue this quarter from last quarter, after the company on Monday posted revenue of NT$830 million for last month, down 19.26 percent year-on-year and 10.27 percent month-on-month.
While a sliding flexible printed circuit (FPC) business caused a decline in revenue last month, the firm’s consolidated revenue for the first 11 months of the year still rose 19.87 percent year-on-year to NT$10.47 billion.
Capital Securities Corp (群益金鼎證券) said in a client note that Ichia’s FPC business has stabilized and would become the company’s major source of profitability this year and next year. The company’s earnings per share are estimated to reach NT$3.25 this year and NT$3.54 next year, the brokerage forecast.
Acer extends reach in Americas
Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday said its Android-powered Liquid E700 smartphones are now available in Bermuda, Jamaica, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, extending the reach of its global smartphone sales network.
The expansion to the Caribbean follows the launches of Acer smartphones across Pan-American nations earlier this year, including Canada, Chile and Mexico, bringing Acer’s smartphone brand to 35 markets around the world, far exceeding its original target of 25 markets set for this year, the company said in a statement.
Microsoft plans new e-mail apps
Microsoft Corp is planning to replace its homegrown Outlook e-mail tools on Apple Inc and Android smartphones with software made by Acompli Inc, a mobile-applications developer it acquired on Monday for about US$200 million, a person familiar with the deal said.
New Outlook apps based on Acompli may be released as soon as next month, the person said.
Microsoft last month unveiled a preview of new Office apps for Android tablets and updated Office for iPads and iPhones, while making many key features available in the free version.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts