AVIATION
TransAsia sells Neihu office
TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空) yesterday sold its office building in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖), allowing the company to book a disposal gain of NT$20 million (US$607,903) this quarter, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. TransAsia said its board agreed to sell the buidling, which has eight above-ground floors and three basement floors, to Taiwan Secom Co (中興保全) for NT$694 million, as the company continues working to revitalize its idle assets and strengthen its financial structure. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
COMPUTERS
Acer ‘will not exit market’
Acer Inc (宏碁) founder and former chairman Stan Shih (施振榮) yesterday said the company will not exit the global PC market, after an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst earlier this month said that Acer and its crosstown rival, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), could be among some PC vendors to drop out of the market in the future. Shih said the company would continue to improve its operations to compete on the world stage, but he is certain that Acer’s PC operations would move to a leaner workforce. Shih said that the PC division will no longer hire new employees.
COMPONENTS
Synnex reports Q3 profit
Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強國際) yesterday reported net profit of NT$300 million for last quarter, with earnings per share (EPS) of NT$0.19, while consolidated sales for last quarter were NT$84.5 billion. The company said financial results for last quarter were generally stronger than the previous quarter, but significantly weakened from a year earlier due to the lack of new product release and the impact from currency depreciation. For this quarter, the company expects the launches of Apple Inc’s iPhone 6S and the new generation for Microsoft Corp and Apple tablets as well as the release of Intel Corp’s Skylake processor to boost the overall market demand, while allowing the company to register a substantial revenue growth from last quarter.
SOLAR ENERGY
Giga Solar might see boost
As China has raised its solar installation demand to between 7 and 8 gigawatts this quarter, Giga Solar Materials Corp (碩禾), a photovoltaic conductive paste maker, might see its fourth-quarter revenue grow 11 percent from last quarter, with EPS of NT$10.5, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a note yesterday. The brokerage also revised upward its revenue forecasts for Giga Solar this year by 64 percent and for next year by 28 percent, citing decent solar power demand growth ahead. In the third quarter, the company reported a net income of NT$928 million, or EPS of NT$15.25, with revenue of NT$4.51 billion, beating market expectations.
ELECTRONICS
Chilisin’s income grows 14%
Power inductor maker Chilisin Electronics Corp (奇力新) on Wednesday reported better-than-expected profit for last quarter, thanks to foreign exchange gains and a lower income tax rate. The company, which competes Holy Stone Enterprise Co (禾伸堂) and Yageo Corp (國巨) in Taiwan as well as TDK Corp of Japan, said net income grew 14 percent to NT$153 million from the previous quarter, with earnings per share of NT$1.2. However, the firm’s operating income only grew 1 percent to NT$151 million from the second quarter, due to higher operating expenses.
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
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
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,”