Gas prices might fall further
Domestic gasoline prices could fall by between NT$0.4 and NT$0.6 (US$0.0126 and US$0.0189) per liter next week from this week to reflect falling global crude oil prices, local media reported yesterday.
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油) is expected to announce domestic fuel prices for next week tomorrow.
Reports by Chinese-language Apple Daily and Economic Daily News said that if international crude prices continued to fall later yesterday, domestic fuel prices could drop to a more than five-year low next week.
Compal might buy Lenovo stock
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) might acquire an unspecified number of shares in Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) to help secure its manufacturing partnership with the world’s largest PC brand, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing unnamed institutional investors.
Buying the Lenovo shares would reduce the concerns investors have about the outlook for Compal’s notebook computer manufacturing business, the paper said.
The two companies set up a joint venture, Lienpal Ltd (聯寶), in 2011 in Hefei in Anhui Province, China, with Lenovo holding a 51 percent stake in the venture and Compal taking the remainder.
Last month, Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) said in an interview with the Apple Daily newspaper that Lenovo is planning to buy back the 49 percent stake in Lienpal held by Compal to avoid earnings dilution.
Hycon applies to list on GTSM
Hycon Technology Corp (紘康科技), a developer of high-precision and low-drift analog signal-related processing integrated circuits, has applied with GRETAI Securities Market (GTSM) to list its shares on the nation’s over-the-counter board.
The chipmaker was established in 2007 in Taipei, with registered capital of NT$244 million. Its main products involve developing IC solutions for battery management, instrumentation and meters, as well as industrial control fields.
Hycon reported cumulative sales of NT$430 million in the first 11 months of last year, up 15.06 percent year-on-year. Net profit was NT$33.24 million in the first three quarters of last year, or NT$1.4 per share, according to the company’s listing prospectus.
Total outstanding loans rise
Total outstanding loans extended by the nation’s banks grew NT$22.9 billion month-on-month to reach NT$2.479 trillion in November last year, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said in a statement on Tuesday.
Non-performing loans (NPL) across the domestic banking sector totaled NT$70.5 billion in November, down from the NT$73.9 billion recorded in October.
The nation’s 39 domestic banks’ NPL ratio improved by 0.02 percent month-on-month to 0.28 percent, while their coverage ratios for allowances for NPLs reached 442.07 percent in November, compared with 418.58 percent in October, the commission said.
V Air hiring flight attendants
V Air (威航), a low-cost carrier that is part of the TransAsia Airways Group (復興航空集團), launched a second recruitment drive for flight attendants on Wednesday, aiming to hire another 80 flight attendants.
V Air, which began service on Dec. 17 with a maiden flight to Bangkok, drew 1,600 applicants when it announced it was hiring its first 80 flight attendants in March last year.
The new campaign is aimed at improving the quality of service on V Air’s expanding flight network, which could extend to Japan and South Korea next year.
The starting salary being offered is NT$50,000 per month — about twice the average pay of new office workers in Taiwan — and the carrier said people who speak Japanese, Korean or Thai, and those with nursing experience will be given priority consideration.
Singapore housing prices fall
Singapore’s housing prices dropped for a fifth consecutive quarter, the longest drop in more than a decade, as tighter mortgage curbs cooled demand in Asia’s second-most expensive housing market.
An index tracking private residential prices fell 1 percent to 205.8 points in the three months ended on Wednesday, the longest stretch of declines since March 2004, and bringing the slide to 4.9 percent from the record-high set in September 2013, according to preliminary data released by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority yesterday.
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
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
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