SMARTPHONES
Global assembly rankings
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major supplier of Apple Inc, was ranked as the world’s second-largest assembler of smartphones in the second quarter of the year, the International Data Corp (IDC) said in its latest report. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), still trailed behind South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co in the top 10 rankings for global smartphone original design manufacturers (ODMs), IDC said yesterday. Pegatron Corp (和碩) dropped one notch to the fourth place in terms of global smartphone ODM shipments in the Apirl-to-June quarter, after LG Electronics Inc but ahead of Flextronics International Ltd. From the sixth to the 10th places are Huaqin Technology Co (華勤通訊技術), Vivo Electronics Corp (維沃移動通信), Inventec Appliances Corp (英華達), Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動) and Wingtech Group Ltd (聞泰集團), IDC said.
SOLAR MAKERS
Neo Solar secures loan
Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光) yesterday received a three-year NT$3.3 billion (US$101 million) syndicated loan from eight banks, coordinated by Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The funds will be used to buy equipment, materials and boost working capital, the filing said. Neo Solar chairman Quincy Lin (林坤禧) said the company’s business has shown positive signs this quarter and order visibility is extending into next quarter, adding that revenue is expected to grow strongly in the fourth quarter on the back of demand pick-up in China and the US. During the January-August period, the company’s cumulative revenue plunged 28.39 percent to NT$13.31 billion from NT$18.59 billion a year earlier.
PHARMACEUTICALS
TWi shares dive 8.94%
Shares in TWi Pharmaceuticals Inc (安成) fell 8.94 percent yesterday after the developer of specialty generic drugs said it had raised up to US$2.83 billion by issuing new global depositary receipts (GDR), triggering investors’ concern about the potential share dilution. TWi said it issued a total of 14.4 million GDRs at a price of US$6.05 per share, which is equivalent to NT$197. That represents a 12 percent discount from the stock’s closing price of NT$224 yesterday in Taipei trading. TWi plans to use the proceeds from the GDR sale to strengthen its research capability, invest in a Chinese subsidiary and expand its capacity in Taiwan. The company’s cumulative revenue in the first eight months dropped 2.45 percent from a year earlier to NT$250.4 million.
REAL ESTATE
No bids for luxury apartment
A second-round foreclosure auction of a luxury apartment in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) failed to attract any bidders yesterday. The apartment, measuring 139.96 ping, was owned by model-turned-celebrity Lei Hung (洪曉蕾) and her husband Wang Shih-chun (王世均). The apartment failed to attract interested buyers during a first-round foreclosure sale on Aug. 13, when it was listed at NT$246.95 million by the Taipei District Court. The unit was to be sold for NT$197.57 million, or NT$1.46 million per ping yesterday, but again failed to attract buyers because of a cooling-down in the luxury property market. Property broker Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) expects the floor price to drop to NT$158.05 million if the unit proceeds to a third-round foreclosure.
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
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
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],”
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