CONSTRUCTION
Ruentex eyes projects
Supermarket operator and property developer Ruentex Development Co (潤泰創新) yesterday said it would book construction revenue from the Song Tao Yuan (松濤苑) project in Taipei’s Boai Special District (博愛) and from the Wan Hua Yuan (萬花園) project in Wanhua District (萬華) in the second half, as the number of available units left for sale has gradually declined as a result of a market downturn. However, the company expects construction revenue to increase next year, as expects to see contributions from the Neihu Zhan (內湖讚) project near the Neihu MRT Station and from the Ming Feng (明峰) project in New Taipei City’s Sijhih District (汐止), Ruentex Development president Li Chih-hung (李志宏) told an investors’ conference in Taipei. In the first eight months, the company’s total revenue plunged 30.1 percent year-on-year to NT$5.89 billion (US$179.8 million).
BANKING
TCB inks Myanmar deal
Taiwan Cooperative Bank (TCB, 合作金庫銀行) in Taipei yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding on business cooperation with Co-operative Bank Ltd of Myanmar. Taiwan Cooperative said its counterpart is the third-largest private bank by total assets in the former junta-ruled Southeast Asian country and expects the partnership to facilitate Taiwanese businesspeople’s investments there. Taiwan Cooperative last month received regulatory approval to set up a representative office in Yangon, which is expected to start operation by the end of this year, the lender said.
CHIP DESIGNERS
ARM to launch facility
UK chip designer ARM Holdings PLC yesterday said it is scheduled to launch a central processing unit (CPU) design center in the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) on Tuesday next week, focusing on the development of the next generation of its Cortex-M processors. The company said the CPU design center will be its fourth and the first in Asia. The Cortex-M processors are mainly used in devices in the Internet of Things market, as well as wearable gadgets and embedded applications, ARM said.
AIRLINES
CAL launches new route
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, yesterday launched a new flight service between Kaohsiung and Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, China. CAL next month plans to provide new flights between Kaohsiung and Kumamoto, and between Kaohsiung and Fukuoka in Japan in addition to flights between Tainan and Osaka, with the carrier aiming to generate more revenue to buck the industry trend of a traditionally slow season in the fourth quarter. CAL reported cumulative revenue of NT$98.76 billion from January to last month, down 1.17 percent from the same period last year.
JAPAN
S&P cuts credit rating
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Ratings Service yesterday downgraded its sovereign credit rating for Japan by one notch from “AA-” to “A+,” saying the nation was unlikely to revive economic growth and end deflation within the next few years. “Despite showing initial promise, the government’s strategy to revive economic growth and end deflation appears unlikely to reverse this deterioration in the next two to three years,” S&P said in a statement. The downgrade came a day after the central bank held fire on expanding its monetary easing program, while economists warned more stimulus could be needed to boost the sagging economy.
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
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured