INSURANCE
Fubon buys Delta Lloyd stake
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) yesterday said its life insurance arm, Fubon Life Insurance (富邦人壽), has secured a 5.47 percent stake in Dutch insurer Delta Lloyd NV for 204 million euros (US$216.55 million), eyeing the investment target’s nearly 6 percent payout ratio and its relatively low price-earnings (PE) ratio of between 7 and 8. Through the investment, Fubon Life might further strengthen cooperation with Delta Lloyd in a bid to raise the company’s global insight and competitiveness, the company said in a statement. Delta Lloyd is the fourth-largest insurance company in the Netherlands with an asset scale standing at about 90 billion euros. The company saw premium income last year total 3.9 billion euros.
INTERNET
Startups to receive funding
The government and eight companies yesterday jointly launched a NT$1.5 billion (US$47.56 million) AppWorks Fund II (本誠創投基金) to help Taiwanese business startups that develop mobile, big data and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Jamie Lin (林之晨), cofounder of AppWorks Ventures (之初創投), a company that help incubate Internet startups, is set to manage the new fund. The company will use the fund to further integrate the engineering workforce with its mature e-commerce market over the next five years and tap into the fast-growing digital economy in Southeast Asia, Lin said at the fund’s launch ceremony.
COMPUTERS
Promise forecasts sales hike
Promise Technology Corp (喬鼎) yesterday said sales would pick up this month after dropping nearly 10 percent to NT$524 million in the first two months of the year from a year earlier, due to a port strike on the US west coast. Sales are expected to bottom out this quarter, with strong sales growth beginning next quarter, due to contributions from new clients and new products, chairman James Lee (李志恩) said. The company’s net income grew 23.4 percent year-on-year to NT$407.96 million last year, or NT$2.56 per share, on revenue of NT$3.82 billion. The firm produces redundant array of independent disks (RAID) and related software, with applications mainly in cloud and information technology, multimedia products and surveillance solutions.
SEMICONDUCTORS
UMC approves cash dividend
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) yesterday said its board approved the distribution of NT$0.55 per share in a cash dividend based on last year’s net profit of NT$12.14 billion, or NT$0.97 per share, with a payout ratio of 57 percent. The board also approved the issuance of 1.27 billion new shares via private placement to introduce technological strategic partners. The fundraising plan could be conducted in the forms of global depositary receipts or corporate bonds, the nation’s second-largest contract chipmaker said. UMC’s board also gave the go-ahead for capital spending of NT$24.103 billion to increase its capacity.
GREEN ENERGY
Neo Solar plans dividend
Solar cell maker Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光) yesterday said its board plans to distribute a cash dividend of NT$0.2 this year, based on earnings of NT$244 million, or NT$0.28 per share, it made last year, according to a company statement. The board also agreed to issue 180 million new shares at home or overseas, as the company plans to expand its business scale and improve its working capital. Neo Solar did not elaborate how much in funds it plans to raise in the move.
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
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
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)