SEMICONDUCTORS
Hermes yearly income falls
Semiconductor inspection tool and equipment maker Hermes Microvision Inc (HMI, 漢微科) yesterday said that its net income for last year fell 28 percent annually to NT$2.32 billion (US$68.6 million), as sales dropped 8 percent year-on-year to NT$6.65 billion. In the previous quarter, HMI reported that net income sequentially rose 55.78 percent to NT$726 million, with sales rising 65 percent sequentially to NT$1.73 billion. Earnings per share was NT$32.7 for last year and NT$10.22 for the previous quarter. HMI gave a conservative outlook on its capital expenditure this year, citing uncertainty over demand and inventory correction for consumer electronics.
FINANCE
UBS to expand in Taiwan
UBS AG yesterday said that it is planning to expand its presence in the Taiwanese market and announced plans to transition its local operation into a domestic brokerage firm. Taiwan is among the top 10 most important markets the Swiss bank is to focus on, UBS Taiwan Wealth Management head Dennis Chen (陳允懋) said. The company is to unveil plans that aim to expand the company’s securities investment trust and consulting business by five to six times, and its securities brokerage business by three to five times before the end of this year, Chen said. UBS last week unveiled plans to double its staff in China in the next five years, adding about 600 people to its ranks.
INSURANCE
Cathay Life to hire
Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) yesterday announced plans to hire up to 77 employees to take part in its training program to cultivate new talent to aid its efforts to stay competitive in the global market. The company said that it is prioritizing hiring new personnel to bolster its ranks of investment managers while its domestic peers typically prioritize increasing the ranks of management associates. Starting monthly salaries range between NT$55,000 and NT$65,000, Cathay Life said, adding that the company favors traits such as ambition and the ability to handle pressure over educational background.
INSURANCE
Insurer posts record income
China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽) yesterday said that its net income for last year rose 41 percent annually to a record NT$9.17 billion with earnings per share of NT$2.75. However, the insurer said due to a surge in new policy subscriptions, which drove up costs, it incurred a loss of NT$1.05 billion last quarter. The insurer said that its 19.99 percent-owned Chinese subsidiary, CCB Life Insurance Co Ltd (建信人壽), recorded a 141 percent increase in net income to 410 million yuan, with total assets rising 70 percent annually to 6.92 billion yuan.
CHIP PACKAGERS
SPIL engineer probed
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密), the world’s No. 3 chip tester and packager, yesterday said that one of its engineers was under investigation for allegedly stealing company trade secrets. A routine check last month found unauthorized programs that had been installed on the company’s servers, SPIL said, adding that the incident has not affected operations. Investigators found files containing employees’ and clients’ personal information, and compensation data belonging to an engineer, surnamed Chu (朱), who was laid off by SPIL last month.
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