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.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last