CTCI Corp (中鼎工程), which builds refinery and power plant facilities, said that it is seeking new business opportunities in “green” energy and pollution reduction projects as demand from refinery clients weakens.
“Since last year, the battle between OPEC and US oil shale producers has led to a glut, forcing prices down amid waning demand from emerging markets, and we have been preparing for this tremendous shakeup,” CTCI spokesperson Hsiao Ming-cheng (蕭明證) told an investors conference on Wednesday.
The company is to bid for air pollution reduction contracts at power plants in Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia before the end of the year, Hsiao said.
The company also plans to continue improving its frontend engineering design services to attract more construction contracts and pursue additional maintenance revenues from existing clients, Hsiao added.
The company reported that sales in the first eight months of this year grew 13.93 percent to NT$40.8 billion (US$1.23 billion), while net income in the first half rose 14 percent year-on-year to NT$988.65 million, or NT$1.31 per share.
As of August, the company reported NT$18 billion in new contracts, compared with NT$77.9 billion last year, while backlog contracts reached NT$166.8 billion, compared with NT$187.1 billion a year earlier.
Refinery and petrochemical projects accounted for 37 percent and 8 percent respectively of new contracts this year, the company said.
To weather the downturn in global oil and petrochemical industries, the company is seeking higher value-added segments, such as contracts for natural gas field facilities, light natural gas export terminals, hydrogenated styrenic block copolymers, and C4 and C5 derivative product plants, Hsiao said.
The company also plans to bolster its service offerings by obtaining upstream technologies such as ethylene crackers, cryogenic tanks, and signal systems for mass rapid transit systems by with strategic partners and through acquisitions.
Next year the company is hoping to tap into the NT$570.6 billion in contract revenues across the globe, of which NT$181.2 billion are non-oil and petrochemical projects.
“As OPEC has established a marked price advantage over US oil shale producers, we anticipate oversupply to begin diminishing gradually, but the situation is more favorable for the US shale gas segment,” Hsiao said.
In the US market, the company is upbeat on continued investments in the country’s shale gas industries, as the cost of US shale gas as feedstock to produce ethylene is lower than naphtha sourced from Asia, seeing growth potential driven by ethylene glycol, ethylene oxide and low-density polyethylene.
CTCI shares rose 4.25 percent to close at NT$40.5 on Friday in Taipei trading outperforming the market’s 0.11 percent gain that day.
The Executive Yuan’s Public Construction Commission said that it has selected CTCI to spearhead its program to export the nation’s expertise in building power plants to the Middle East and Southeast Asian markets.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
Nvidia Corp’s negotiations to invest as much as US$100 billion in OpenAI have broken down, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, exposing a potential rift between two of the most powerful companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The discussions stalled after some inside Nvidia expressed concerns about the transaction, the WSJ reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the deliberations. OpenAI makes the popular chatbot ChatGPT, while Nvidia dominates the market for AI processors that help develop such software. The companies announced the agreement in September last year, saying at the time that they had signed a letter of intent for a strategic
RSS