Chief financial officers (CFOs) in the Asia-Pacific region, including Taiwan, are confident in their regional businesses, as measured by growth prospects, their ability to manage and mitigate risk and their appetite for investment, a recent survey shows.
The Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s 2015 CFO Outlook Asia survey released yesterday showed that 84 percent of the respondents said they expect revenues to rise this year, up from 76 percent in the same survey conducted last year.
CFOs are also more bullish on profits this year, with 73 percent of those surveyed forecasting growth this year, compared with 60 percent last year.
The CFOs’ expectations of growth in both revenue and profits places confidence at its highest level since the survey began in 2012, Merrill Lynch said in a statement.
The survey shows that financial market risk (54 percent versus 36 percent last year), particularly higher US interest rates and continued currency volatility, is the biggest risk facing corporations this year.
“CFOs in Asia Pacific are acutely aware of the risks in the market and have taken necessary steps to manage them better,” Merrill Lynch head of Asia-Pacific corporate banking and global corporate banking subsidiaries Steven Victorin said.
“Past financial crises have taught the region’s most successful CFOs valuable lessons in prudent financial and risk management. As a result, we find that corporations with substantial cash surpluses, closely hedged currency exposures and an actively mitigated interest rate strategy are more confident in dealing with market challenges and pursuing growth strategies,” he said.
“For CFOs in Asia Pacific, growth is the clear priority and we are seeing significant uptick of strategic dialogue around acquisitions, financing and holistic balance sheet management,” Victorin said.
Merrill Lynch’s 2015 CFO Outlook Asia report includes the views of 630 respondents at the CFO or CFO-equivalent level within finance departments.
Now in its fourth edition, the report offers insights into the strategies deployed by key financial decisionmakers across multiple industries and 12 economies in the region.
About 97 percent of the respondents come from corporations with at least US$500 million annual turnover and represent a balanced mix of multinational corporations and large local companies, the bank said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been