ECONOMY
Reserves rise US$3.485bn
Foreign-exchange reserves totaled US$418.174 billion as of the end of last month, an increase of US$3.485 billion from a month earlier, the central bank said yesterday. The main factor behind the increase was the appreciation of the euro and other main currencies against the US dollar last month from March, as well as returns from foreign exchange reserves management, the bank said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
WPG forecasts sales rise
Semiconductor component distributor WPG Holdings Co (大聯大投資控股) yesterday projected that sales for this quarter would grow by between 8.32 percent and 12.95 percent from NT$108.014 billion last quarter due to expanding business scale and increased resource integration. Consolidated sales are forecast to be between NT$117 billion and NT$122 billion, while gross margin is likely to fall to between 4.2 percent and 4.5 percent this quarter, compared with 4.46 percent last quarter, and operating margin could slide to between 1.6 percent and 1.8 percent from 1.85 percent over the same period, the firm said. Last quarter, WPG posted a net profit of NT$1.398 billion, or NT$0.84 per share.
SEMICONDUCTORS
WT forecasts flat sales
IC distributor WT Microelectronics Co (文曄科技) yesterday said sales for this quarter would be flat from last quarter. Consolidated revenue would be between NT$28 billion and NT$29.5 billion this quarter, compared with NT$28.54 billion last quarter. Gross margin would likely range between 5.5 and 5.7 percent, compared with 5.5 percent last quarter, while operating margin would likely be between 2.1 and 2.3 percent, compared with 2.15 percent in the previous quarter, the company said. Net income was NT$479 million in the first quarter of the year.
PHARMACEUTICALS
New drug lifts PharmaEngine
Drug developer PharmaEngine Inc (智擎) yesterday saw shares rise 0.91 percent to NT$277 after the company’s licensing partner Baxter International Inc this week submitted a marketing authorization application (MAA) to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for new drug MM-398 (irinotecan liposome injection). This came after the company’s another licensing partner, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc, recently filed new drug application (NDA) filing for the approval of the drug — used as a second-line medicine for patients treated with gemcitabine — with the US Food and Drug Administration. PharmaEngine CEO Grace Yeh (葉常菁) said the company is preparing the NDA filing for Taiwan.
AUTOPARTS
Actron sales hit record high
Automotive electronic diode supplier Actron Technology Corp (朋程科技) yesterday said sales reached NT$329.02 million last month, the highest monthly figure in the company’s history. Curmulative sales in the January-to-April period grew 1.81 percent year-on-year to NT$1.23 billion. Sales for this quarter may hit record level thanks to consistent demand for rectifier diodes worldwide, the company said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Lextar sales rise 2.6%
LED chipmaker Lextar Electronics Corp (隆達電子) yesterday reported sales of NT$1.2 billion (US$38.98 million) for last month, up 2.6 percent from last year’s NT$1.17 billion, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. In the first four months of the year, cumulative sales grew 2.05 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.7 billion, the filing 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