FINANCIAL SERVICES
Yuanta profit up almost 5%
Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控), owner of the nation’s biggest securities brokerage, yesterday said its net profit grew 4.45 percent year-on-year to NT$1.9 billion (US$60.85 million) last month, bringing its cumulative profit for the first quarter of the year to NT$4.05 billion. The Taipei-based firm’s net profit for the first quarter was 10.65 percent higher than the same period last year, with earnings per share of NT$0.4, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Yuanta Securities Co (元大寶來證券) posted a NT$2.36 billion profit for the first quarter, up 28.57 percent from the previoius year.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Seasonal shift hits Hermes
Semiconductor equipment maker Hermes Microvision Inc (漢微科) yesterday posted a 34.69 percent annual increase in revenue for last quarter, due to new product transition. However, the NT$1.57 billion revenue for last quarter was nearly 42 percent lower than the previous quarter, which was lower than the company’s forecast of a 50 percent decrease, but larger than the 32 percent quarterly decline forecast by Deutsche Bank.
COMPUTERS
Advantech sales surge
Advantech Co (研華) yesterday reported the highest monthly sales in the company’s history last month, boding well for the leading industrial computer maker’s outlook for this quarter aided by its growing presence in the factory automation and logistics industries. Sales rose 9.5 percent year-on-year and 43.95 percent month-on-month to NT$3.39 billion, with cumulative sales for the first quarter hitting NT$8.8 billion, up 8.03 percent from the previous year, the highest quarterly level on record.
HEALTHCARE
Pacific Hospital sales dip
Pacific Hospital Supply Co (太平洋醫材), the nation’s largest manufacturer of medical supplies, yesterday said its sales for the first quarter declined 2.24 percent from the previous year, as sales growth slowed in some major markets, while construction of new plants has yet to be completed. Accumulated sales for the first three months of the year were NT$363.49 million, down from NT$371.81 million the previous year, the company said in a filing to the stock exchange.
HEALTHCARE
Apex Medical sales soar
Respiratory therapy equipment maker Apex Medical Corp (雃博) yesterday said strong growth in orders from the Asia-Pacific region and stable sales in the Greater China region increased its sales by 50.13 percent month-on-month last month to NT$221.07 million, which was 0.56 percent higher than the previous year. While sales for the first quarter fell 11.56 percent from the previous year to NT$517.77 million, sales for this quarter are expected to bounce back and the sales for the whole year are forecast to register double-digit percentage growth from last year’s NT$2.27 billion.
ELECTRONICS
Lite-On Q1 sales edge up
Electronic components maker Lite-On Technology Corp’s (光寶科技) core businesses — including optoelectronics, LED components and information technology peripherals — have healthy order books amid stable market demand, leading the company’s sales last month to grow 26.44 percent from the previous month. Sales were NT$18.19 billion last month. First-quarter sales totaled NT$51.54 billion, slightly up from NT$51.39 billion in the same period last year, the company said.
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