STEELMAKERS
CSC profit, shipments drop
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s biggest steelmaker, yesterday said consolidated pre-tax profits plunged 27 percent to NT$2.06 billion (US$65.6 million) last month from NT$2.86 billion in January. Revenue shrank 20 percent to NT$23.58 billion last month, compared with NT$29.4 billion in January. Shipments of carbon steel tumbled about 20 percent sequentially to 644,118 tonnes last month, compared with 824,916 tonnes in January.
CHIPMAKERS
Faraday to boost returns
Faraday Technology Corp (智原), a fabless chip designing service and silicon patent provider, yesterday said its board approved a plan to cancel 40 percent of its capital shares in a bid to boost shareholders’ return on equity. After canceling 166 million shares, Faraday will have 248.5 million capital shares, according to a statement the company submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company plans to pay back NT$4 per share to shareholders. The firm is scheduled to hold an annual shareholder’s meeting on June 9 to approve the capital reduction plan.
INVESTMENT
Merrill Lynch hosts forum
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is to host an investors’ conference at the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel in Taipei beginning today that will discuss the next growth drivers in the dynamic technology industry. The “Taiwan, Technology & Beyond Conference — Catch A Wave,” scheduled to run from today to Thursday, is in its 18th year and is expected to bring together senior executives from about 130 domestic and foreign companies representing both high-tech and non-high-tech sectors. Among the scheduled speakers are executives from Taiwan-listed technology companies, such as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), contract laptop maker Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), touchpanel maker TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), DRAM memory chipmaker Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) and wireless carrier Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), according to Merrill Lynch. The three-day conference is set to open today with a keynote speech by Merrill Lynch semiconductor analyst Daniel Heyler, who will discuss “the next growth wave in mobile.”
MARKETS
TAIEX falls on electronics
The TAIEX closed lower yesterday as foreign institutional investors continued to pull their funds out of large-cap electronics heavyweights. The TAIEX fell 66.44 points, or 0.69 percent, to close at the day’s low of 9,512.91 after reaching a high of 9,590.76. Turnover was NT$81.07 billion. The market opened higher following early gains in other Asian markets, but it fell into negative territory shortly before 9:30am and continued falling the rest of the session on weakness in the electronics sector. The bellwether electronics sub-index fell 1.06 percent, the biggest decline posted by any sector yesterday. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the heaviest weighted stock in the market, fell 2.01 percent to close at NT$146.0, while IC design firm MediaTek Inc (聯發科) tumbled 3.57 percent to close at NT$432.0. Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$9.04 billion in shares, much of it coming in the electronics sector. They were net sellers of nearly 10.7 million TSMC shares and nearly 7.9 million MediaTek shares during the session, stock exchange data showed.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained