VEHICLES
New car sales rise 3.7%
New vehicle sales rose a stronger-than-expected 3.7 percent year-on-year and 13.5 percent month-on-month to 46,803 units last month, data compiled by local motor vehicle offices showed on Monday. In the first seven months of the year, total vehicle sales increased 3.2 percent from a year earlier to 264,000 units, the data showed. “In our view, good July auto sales should help alleviate concern about domestic consumption, but the stock market’s recent sluggish performance might be a watch point for second-half consumer confidence, hence replacement demand,” Morgan Stanley analyst Terence Cheng (程世維) said in a note. Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus models, continued to be the market leader, selling 85,942 cars with a market share of 32.6 percent, data showed.
SEMICONDUCTORS
WT Micro offers Q3 guidance
Chip distributor WT Microelectronics Co (文曄科技) yesterday said it expects consolidated revenue of between NT$27.6 billion and NT$29.2 billion (US$869.9 million and US$920.4 million) this quarter, after posting sales of NT$28.76 billion last quarter, which were in line with its guidance. Gross margin is likely to range between 5.6 and 5.8 percent, compared with 5.61 percent last quarter, while operating expense would increase slightly from last quarter and inventory turnover days are predicted to hold steady from last quarter, the company said. WT Microelectronics reported a net income of NT$487 million for last quarter, or NT$1.09 per share. In the first half of the year, the company earned NT$967 million, or NT$2.22 per share.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Elan expects Q3 sales pickup
Touchpanel controller chipmaker Elan Microelectronics Corp (義隆電子) yesterday said it expects revenue this quarter to grow slightly from last quarter’s NT$1.52 billion, aided by increasing shipments of touchpad chips for notebook computers, smartphones and tablets. The company reported a net income of NT$160 million in the second quarter, or NT$0.38 per share, down 66 percent year-on-year and 36 percent quarter-on-quarter. It was its lowest profit in 13 quarters. Gross margin dropped 4 percentage points to 42 percent from the previous quarter. Earnings per share in the first six months of the year also plunged 49 percent from a year earlier to NT$0.97. Elan said it is on schedule to roll out fingerprint recognition chips in the fourth quarter, with revenue contribution from the new products extending into next year.
TECHNOLOGY
HMI shares fall on forecasts
The market capitalization of electron beam wafer inspection equipment maker Hermes Microvision Inc (HMI, 漢微科) shrank by more than NT$20 billion in two days after its share price plunged by the daily limit for a second day yesterday. The stock closed at NT$1,280 on the over-the-counter Taipei Exchange yesterday, down NT$295 from Friday last week, when HMI provided its third-quarter sales forecast — which was lower than consensus estimates — citing weakening momentum in the global IC industry. “We view HMI’s weak outlook as incrementally negative and attribute it mostly to Intel’s push-out of migration partially due to the diminishing return on migration,” Goldman Sachs analyst Donald Lu (呂東風) said in a note on Monday. The brokerage cut its earnings forecast for HMI by 8 percent this year and lowered its 12-month share price target from NT$1,318 to NT$1,200.
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