Giga Solar plans China plants
Solar material producer Giga Solar Materials Corp (碩禾電子) plans to invest US$10 million to establish production lines in China, eyeing the domestic market there.
The company said yesterday its board had approved the investment plan. The preliminary plan is to set up plants in China’s Jiangsu Province or Zhejiang Province, Giga Solar said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The Hsinchu-based company’s business focuses on photovoltaic conductive pastes for solar cells. The investment in China needs to gain regulatory approval in Taiwan.
Sime Darby sets sales goal
Sime Darby Kia Taiwan Co (台灣森納美起亞), which distributes Kia cars in Taiwan, aims to sell 4,000 cars in the local market by the end of next year, the company said.
The firm yesterday launched the locally assembled Carens, a seven-seater multipurpose vehicle, after introducing three new car models to Taiwan over the past month — the Morning subcompact, Optima sedan and Soul crossover.
Sime Darby Kia said it had sold 35 locally manufactured Morning cars from Nov. 13 through yesterday, while the imported Optima and Soul models are expected to hit the local market by the end of next month, the company said.
EVA Air expands codeshare
EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空) and Singapore Airlines Ltd yesterday started code-sharing their flights to the US and Canada, expanding a codeshare agreement between the two carriers on the Taipei-Singapore route.
Singapore Airlines passengers will now be able to fly to Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, as well as Toronto and Vancouver from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, according to EVA.
“This mutually beneficial partnership gives both EVA Air and Singapore Airlines passengers more flexibility in their flight itineraries,” EVA executive vice president Glenn Chai (翟健華) said in a statement.
Banks may face risks: Fitch
Taiwanese banks may face potential downside risks from rising exposure in China and a protracted slowdown in advanced economies and China, adding to pressure on their credit profiles, Fitch Ratings Ltd said yesterday.
The Taiwanese banking sector’s aggregate exposure in China, mainly focused on lending to Taiwanese firms operating in the nation, is moderate at about 10 percent of their total assets as of June 30, Fitch Ratings said.
“Fitch expects the exposures to rise to 15 percent by 2016, with the credit quality in exposures in China likely to weaken as the banks expand to provide loans to local borrowers on the mainland,” the agency said in a statement.
CTCI office building space sells
A British Virgin Islands-registered company on Thursday bought partial floors of the upscale CTCI (中鼎工程) office building in Taipei’s Dunhua S Road for NT$2.845 billion (US$90.96 million) through an auction, 0.4 percent higher than the asking price, bidding organizer Savills Taiwan Ltd (第一太平洋戴維斯) said.
The one above-ground floor and one basement floor of the CTCI building have a total floor space of 3,751.63 ping (12,402m2). The transaction translates into NT$793,000 per ping, according to Savills.
The floors represent the remaining underlying assets of the Gallop No. 1 real-estate investment trust fund issued by Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行) in 2007. They were put on the market again after failing to secure a buyer in the previous auction last month.
CHT outlook stable: S&P
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has revised its outlook on Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信) to “stable” from “negative,” while affirming its “AA” long-term rating citing the company’s dominant market position and strong financial profile.
“We revised the outlook because we believe that proposed deregulation that could weaken CHT’s dominant market position in fixed-line business is unlikely to materialize in the next one to two years,” S&P said in a statement.
The growing penetration of 4G and cable TV services will also help offset the company’s declining fixed-line business, it added.
Combined sales down slightly
The nation’s listed companies saw their combined sales on a consolidated basis increase last month from a year earlier, but decline from the previous month, according to tallies compiled by the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE).
Based on the stock exchange’s latest statistics released on Thursday, the aggregate sales of 810 listed companies totaled NT$2.576 trillion last month, up 4.79 percent from a year ago, but 0.62 percent lower than in October.
In the first 11 months of the year, the aggregate sales of all listed companies amounted to NT$25.67 trillion, up 6.04 percent from a year ago. Among them, 525 firms saw total revenue rise annually, while 286 firms reported declining sales, the TWSE said.
PlayStation heading to China
Sony Corp is to offer its PlayStation consoles in China from next month, the company said yesterday, following rival Microsoft Corp into the potentially lucrative market after China ended a 14-year ban.
The company will launch the PlayStation 4 in China on Jan. 11, priced at 2,899 yuan (US$475), Sony said in a press release, adding that pre-sales started yesterday.
The company’s handheld game console PlayStation Vita will also be available, with a price tag of 1,299 yuan, Sony said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the