TAX
Treasury collects NT$1.96tn
The national treasury collected a record NT$1.96 trillion (US$61.26 billion) in tax revenues last year, 4.8 percent higher than the budget target, driven primarily by business and personal income taxes, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Business income tax totaled NT$401.2 billion last year, while personal income tax amounted to NT$408.3 billion, the ministry said.
ELECTRONICS
Acer revenue falls
PC maker Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday reported revenue of NT$85.67 billion for the last quarter, down 1.17 percent from a year earlier and 0.11 percent from the previous month. The firm posted revenue of NT$86.69 billion in the fourth quarter of last year and NT$85.68 billion in the previous quarter, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Acer’s consolidated annual revenue totaled NT$329.83 billion last year, a decline of 8.43 percent from the previous year’s NT$360.19 billion. Acer shares dropped 1.43 percent to NT$20.65 in Taipei trading yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX, which fell 0.4 percent.
BANKING
FSC approves Wuhan branch
State-run Taiwan Business Bank (臺灣企銀) has won the the Financial Supervisory Commission’s (FSC) approval to set up a new branch in Wuhan, China, allowing the lender to strengthen services to Taiwanese firms in central China, the bank said in a statement yesterday. The new branch will be its second in China — the first was opened in Shanghai in August 2012. Wuhan, the eighth-largest city in China, is home to many Taiwanese aiming to take advantage of China’s GDP growth, the bank said, adding that it would reach out to small and medium-sized corporate customers there.
TECHNOLOGY
Hiwin posts revenue hike
Hiwin Technology Corp (上銀科技), the nation’s largest machine tool maker, last week reported NT$4.28 billion in sales for last quarter, bringing the company’s total revenue last year up 21.25 percent to NT$15.08 billion. The company made annual revenue of NT$12.44 in 2013. Last quarter’s figure jumped 10.59 percent from the previous year’s NT$3.87 billion, but only rose 1.18 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$4.23 billion. JPMorgan Securities Ltd said Hiwin’s sales growth momentum would resume from this quarter, due to healthy order momentum from machine tool vendors and incremental demand for industrial robots. Contribution from industrial robots is forecast to account for 10 to 15 percent of the company’s estimated revenue of NT$17.69 billion this year, JPMorgan said in a note on Thursday last week.
OPTICS
St Shine struggles in Japan
Contact lens maker St Shine Optical Co Ltd (精華光學) might continue losing market share in Japan this year due to intense market competition and continued pricing pressure stemming from foreign exchange fluctuations, Deutsche Bank said in a client note on Wednesday last week. The company has forecast flat sales growth for this quarter from last quarter’s NT$1.34 billion, which rose 0.8 percent from the previous quarter, with momentum likely to pick up next quarter when clients launch new products. Deutsche Bank forecast St Shine to post 6 percent growth in year-on-year sales to NT$5.74 billion this year. Last year, the company’s sales totaled NT$5.41 billion, up 3.62 percent from 2013.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by