FINANCE
S&P retains CTBC rating
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) yesterday said it was maintaining its “BBB” rating and stable outlook for CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), as well as “A-” rating and stable outlook for CTBC Bank Co (中國信託銀行), following CTBC Bank’s announcement on Tuesday that it was acquiring CITIC Bank International (China) Ltd (中信銀行國際中國) via a cash purchase and investing in a consumer finance joint venture in China. S&P said the investments would have a minimal impact on CTBC Bank’s capitalization because the NT$11.67 billion (US$379.8 million) deal and the investment of NT$1.75 billion in the proposed joint venture would be funded by an equivalent capital injection from CTBC Financial. The parent firm is to sell a 3.8 percent stake to China CITIC Bank Corp Ltd (中信銀行) for NT$13.09 billion via a private placement.
ELECTRONICS
Lite-On boss at NASDAQ
Lite-On Group (光寶集團) chairman Raymond Soong (宋恭源) on Tuesday rang the opening bell at the NASDAQ MarketSite in New York to start the day’s trading on the exchange with Diodes Inc president and chief executive officer Lu Keh-shew (盧克修), the company said in a release. Diodes Inc is a Lite-On Group investment that supplies discrete, analogue and logic semiconductor components. The NASDAQ-listed firm, which reported earnings per share of US$1.31 last year, has a tradition of ringing the opening bell at the NASDAQ MarketSite every five years, the release said.
ELECTRONICS
GIS sets IPO next month
General Interface Solution Holding Ltd (GIS, 業成科技), a touchpanel manufacturing arm of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), is to launch its initial public offering (IPO) on the main bourse next month. The company’s products are used in smartphones, tablets and notebook computers. It made NT$1.34 billion in net profit, or NT$4.81 per share, last year. Revenue stood at NT$75.96 billion last year, the company said in a statement. Last quarter, net profit amounted to NT$37 million, or NT$0.13 per share. Revenue totaled NT$15.22 billion last quarter.
COMPONENTS
Suppliers under pressure
The Taiwanese component suppliers of Samsung Electronics Co’s premium Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones will be under greater pressure as sales of the smartphones slow, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a note yesterday. These suppliers include quartz crystal components manufacturer TXC Corp (台灣晶技), printed circuit board maker Unimicron Technology Corp (欣興電子), fingerprint sensor provider Egis Technology Inc (神盾) and analogue chip designer Richtek Technology Corp (立錡科技), Yuanta said. Due to a weaker than expected sell-through, Yuanta has cut its Galaxy S6 build-plan estimate for the second quarter to 20 million units from 25 million units, and lowered its estimate for this year to 50 million units from 60 million units. Overall, Samsung is expected to ship 331 million smartphones this year, up only 6 percent from last year, it said.
DISPLAYS
Wintek to be delisted
Touchpanel maker Wintek Corp (勝華科技) is to be delisted, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. The listing is to be withdrawn on July 7, it said. Wintek shares were suspended on Nov. 19 last year as the debt-ridden company cut its workforce and looked to restructure its business after incurring losses for years amid falling orders and intensifying competition.
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
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],”
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
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