PC MAKERS
Dell fined over SonicWall
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday fined Dell BV Taiwan NT$2 million (US$65,157.19) for refusing to sell Internet security software SonicWall to a Taiwanese software company two years ago. The commission said the Taiwanese firm was appointed by Chunghwa Telecom Co’s (中華電信) southern branch to purchase SonicWall, but Dell allegedly requested its local distributors to not sell the software to the firm, and in doing so violated Article 19 of the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法).
STOCK MARKETS
TWSE approves TOPIX funds
The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE, 臺灣證券交易所) on Tuesday approved Fubon Securities Investment Trust Co’s (富邦投信) issue of three exchange-traded funds (ETF) tracking the TOPIX, the benchmark index in Tokyo. The three ETFs to be raised by Fubon are to be denominated in New Taiwan dollars, the TWSE said, adding that initial cooperation between the stock exchange in Taiwan and Japan could start in the second half of this year.
HEALTHCARE
Dr Wu to debut on prep board
Dr Wu Skincare Co (達爾膚生技), 22.6 percent held by French luxury brand Louis Vuitton Malletier, is to debut its shares today on the local emerging board, which is a preparatory board for the nation’s two main bourses. The leading clinical skincare brand reported earnings per share of NT$8.68 last year. The company operates more than 1,200 stores in Asia and North America, with a 30 percent market share in Taiwan, CEO Wu Yi-jui (吳奕叡) said.
PANEL MAKERS
Radiant income drops 49.6%
Radiant Opto-Electronics Corp (瑞儀光電), a supplier of LCD backlight modules for Apple’s iPad, yesterday said net income fell by 49.6 percent year-on-year and 71.5 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$395 million for the first quarter of the year, or NT$0.85 per share. The firm attributed the weaker-than-expected earnings to declining sales and sliding margins last quarter. Sales fell to NT$9.44 billion and gross margin dropped to 10.2 percent last quarter, the firm said. The firm’s board yesterday approved the distribution of a cash dividend of NT$5.5 per share after the company posted earnings per share of NT$8.01 last year.
TELECOMS
Far EasTone beats forecast
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation’s third-biggest telecom, on Tuesday reported earnings per share of NT$0.92 for the quarter ending last month, beating the firm’s forecast, while its average revenue per user increased 3 percent year-on-year, the strongest among local peers. However, it faced margin pressure in the first quarter, with earnings before income tax, depreciation and amortization margins falling by 2.5 percent year-on-year, compared with Chunghwa Telecom Co’s (中華電信) 0.3 percent growth and Taiwan Mobile Co’s (台灣大哥大) 2.3 percent decrease.
ELECTRONICS
LCD TV shipments down 24%
Global shipments of LCD TVs shrank by 24 percent from the previous quarter to 51.44 million units last quarter, according to WitsView, an LCD research arm of TrendForce Corp (集邦科技). The falling shipments for last quarter were caused by a mixed bag of negative factors, WitsView said, citing weak consumer purchases in Europe and emerging markets because of volatile foreign exchange rates there, as well as saturated demand in China.
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