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.
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