FOREX
Reserves rise US$2.84bn
The nation’s foreign exchange reserves rose to US$424.79 billion at the end of last month, an increase of US$2.84 billion from the prior month, the central bank said yesterday. The bank attributed the increase to foreign exchange investment gains and appreciations in the euro and other reserve currencies against the US dollar.
BATTERIES
Simplo sales increase
Simplo Technology Co (新普科技), which supplies batteries for Apple Inc’s iPhone and Macbook, yesterday reported a 6.29 percent annual increase and a 3.7 percent monthly rise in sales to NT$5.32 billion (US$162.03 million) for last month. In the first eight months of this year, cumulative revenue totaled NT$41.11 billion, up by 15.55 percent from a year earlier, the company said. Simplo last month forecast revenue for this quarter would grow mildly by 2.87 percent to NT$16.1 billion from last quarter’s NT$15.65 billion, compared with a forecast of a 3.14 percent increase to NT$16.14 billion by Capital Investment Management Co (群益投顧).
SOLAR ENERGY
Gintech revenue falls 3%
Solar cell maker Gintech Energy Corp (昱晶) yesterday said revenue dropped by 3 percent last month to NT$1.44 billion from NT$1.48 billion in July, as the company is relocating some local capacity overseas, which affected shipments. Due to higher average selling prices, last month’s revenue grew by 65.2 percent from NT$869 million in the same period last year. Gintech said it is relocating 350 megawatts of its domestic production capacity to a plant in Thailand to avoid an import tariff to the US of between 15 percent and 20 percent. The Thailand plant is scheduled to start operations at the end of this year, Gintech said.
TEXTILES
Makalot share target raised
Daiwa Capital Markets Inc yesterday raised its 12-month share price target on textile supplier Makalot Industrial Co (聚陽) to NT$315 from NT$294, citing the firm’s strong earnings visibility, continuous margin expansion and rising profit contribution from functional sportswear. The brokerage’s decision followed Makalot on Thursday reporting revenue of NT$2.26 billion for last month, up 10.82 percent year-on-year and 7.43 percent month-on-month, with revenue for the first eight months of the year rising 14.02 percent from a year earlier to NT$15.11 billion. Shares in Makalot, which counts Hanesbrands Inc, The Gap Inc, Kohl’s Corp and Under Armour Inc among its clients for functional sportswear, closed 3.8 percent lower at NT$278.5 yesterday.
CONVENIENCE STORES
Beef bowl tie-up launched
Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店) has teamed up with Japanese fast food restaurant chain Yoshinoya to tap into the light meal market in Taiwan, as the convenience store chain continues expanding its product offerings in the domestic market, Taiwan FamilyMart president Yeh Jung-ting (葉榮廷) said in a statement yesterday. The two companies yesterday began selling Yoshinoya’s beef bowls at one of FamilyMart’s branches on Ruiguang Road in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖). The new product is available daily at lunch and dinner hours in three portion sizes priced from NT$59 to NT$109, said FamilyMart, which is the nation’s second-largest convenience store operator, with about 3,000 stores nationwide.
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