STOCKS
Listed firms’ 2014 sales rise
The companies listed on the nation’s main bourse saw their combined sales for last month increase from November on a consolidated basis, but post an annual decline, tallies released yesterday showed. The aggregate sales of the 810 companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange totaled NT$2.7 trillion (US$84.8 billion) last month, up 4.81 percent from the previous month, but 0.7 percent lower year-on-year. For the whole of last year, aggregate sales for all of the nation’s listed companies amounted to NT$28.39 trillion, up 5.36 percent from 2013. The increase was driven mainly by firms in the semiconductor and automobile industries, as well as electronics distributors. Among them, 521 businesses saw their total revenue rise annually, while 292 firms reported declining sales, the stock exchange said.
INSURANCE
Web boosts non-life insurers
The nation’s non-life insurance sector received NT$13.51 million in premiums through online channels last year, according to data released by the Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday. Four non-life insurers that the commission has allowed to operate online insurance shopping services received a total of 13,412 cases online as of the end of last year, led by motorcycle insurance policies, the data showed. Meanwhile, four life insurers that the commission also approved to operate online shops got 393 cases via the Internet over the same period, with premiums totaling NT$88,575, the data showed.
COMPUTERS
Acer founder happy with CEO
Acer Inc (宏碁) founder and former chairman Stan Shih (施振榮) yesterday said he is satisfied with chief executive officer Jason Chen (陳俊聖), even though the computer manufacturer’s annual revenue last year declined 8.43 percent from the previous year to an eight-year low of NT$329.84 billion. Chen took the post in January last year. Shih said the company is taking the right steps in transforming itself and that he sees its falling annual revenue as a corporate strategy, since Acer “must earn money first and hold steady before making its next move.” Shih made the remarks on the sidelines of the cross-Taiwan Strait Mobile Internet Conference in Taipei.
AIRLINES
FAT denies ‘Next’ claim
FAT Taiwan Inc (遠東航空) on Monday denied a report that chairman Chang Kang-wei (張綱維) embezzled company assets, adding that it is on track to complete its restructuring plan after the Lunar New Year holiday. The airline issued the denial after the Chinese-language Next Magazine last week reported that Chang took advantage of the company by earning unreasonable premiums from the leasing of two aircraft. Chang, who holds 99.97 percent of the carrier, denied the magazine’s allegation and said the company would sue the publication for slander.
GAMES
Soft-World sales hit record
Soft-World International Corp (智冠科技) last week reported its highest-ever annual sales, after last year’s figure came in at NT$15.03 billion, rising 36.4 percent from 2013. The nation’s top game developer by sales attributed the boom to the popularity of its handset-based games, as well as its growing “MyCard” game credit card business. Meanwhile, online game publishers Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子) and X-Legend Entertainment Co (傳奇網路) also reported record-high sales for last year, at NT$9.09 billion and NT$1.47 billion respectively.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts