SOLAR POWER
Bankruptcy plan approved
Taiwan Polysilicon Corp (福聚太陽能), which makes polysilicon for solar cell products, yesterday said its board had approved a plan to file for bankruptcy after its restructuring efforts failed. The company’s liabilities totaled NT$14.31 billion (US$464.9 million) last year, surpassing its assets of NT$2.28 billion, according to a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company, which is 64.87 percent owned by petrochemical product maker LCY Chemical Corp (李長榮化學), plans to cut 123 workers to save costs, it said in a separate statement.
FINANCE
Fubon sees assets grow
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) yesterday said its assets grew more than NT$5.55 trillion as of the end of the first quarter, as the company booked more than NT$26 billion in overseas investment gains. The figure was 10.2 percent higher than a year earlier and NT$116 billion more than it recorded at the end of last year, the company said. In the first quarter, the company posted a record-high net income of NT$20.03 billion, or NT$1.96 per share. As of the end of March, its return on assets and equity stood at 1.47 percent and 18.96 percent respectively.
RUBBER PRODUCTS
Cheng Shin earnings slow
Tire maker Cheng Shin Rubber Industry Co (正新橡膠) yesterday reported weaker-than-expected earnings for the first quarter, because of higher marketing, and research and development expenses, as well as foreign-exchange losses. Operating income was NT$4.62 billion and net income was NT$3.26 billion in the first quarter, or earnings per share of NT$1.01, with gross margin of 29.1 percent, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company reported an annual decline of 7.7 percent in sales for the first four months of the year to NT$39.27 billion, mainly due to price competition in China.
SOLAR POWER
Giga Solar net income falls
Giga Solar Materials Corp (碩禾), a photovoltaic conductive paste maker, on Tuesday reported a non-operating loss of about NT$100 million that caused its net income to drop to NT$352 million last quarter, or NT$5.8 per share. The company booked fire damage of NT$30 million at its Hukou Township (湖口), Hsinchu County, plant and a foreign-exchange loss of more than NT$60 million last quarter. However, new material procurement methodology enabled the company to post record-high operating income of NT$555 million last quarter, with gross margin of 24.2 percent.
ELECTRONICS
Zhen Ding predicts sales rise
Flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) maker Zhen Ding Holding Ltd (臻鼎) might see sales grow 5 percent this quarter from last quarter’s NT$17.8 billion, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a note. However, Zhen Ding’s net income this quarter is forecast to drop 9 percent from NT$1.38 billion last quarter, because of tooling costs for new FPC parts for the upcoming iPhone 6S, Yuanta said. Zhen Ding posted net income of NT$1.38 billion last quarter, or earnings per share of NT$1.71.
ELECTRONICS
Primax posts net income
Computer peripheral products maker Primax Electronics Ltd (致伸電子) posted net income of NT$370 million for the first quarter, or earnings per share of $NT0.85, compared with the previous quarter’s NT$0.76 and the previous year’s NT$0.75.
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
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)
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