ELECTRONICS
Foxconn reports small fire
Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday said that a small fire at its plant in Zengzhou, China, caused no injuries and did not impact manufacturing operations. The company, which assembles Apple Inc’s iPhones, said that there was a small fire on the roof of one of the buildings at the Zhengzhou facility on Sunday night, which was brought under control by the fire department shortly after it was reported. The company’s shares yesterday rose 1.6 percent to NT$76 in Taipei trading.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Holtek net income up 1.9%
Holtek Semiconductor Inc (盛群半導體) yesterday posted a net income of NT$806 million (US$23.97 million) for last year, up 1.9 percent from NT$798.58 million in 2014. Earnings per share last year were NT$3.57, compared with NT$3.5 earnings per share the previous year, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Combined revenues totaled NT$3.96 billion, an increase of 0.9 percent from NT$3.93 billion recorded in 2014, the firm said.
ONLINE COMMERCE
Jollywiz helping food firms
Jollywiz Digital Technology Co (樂利科技) yesterday announced it is cooperating with pineapple cake brand Sunny Hills (微熱山丘) and Lian Hwa Foods Co (聯華食品) by introducing the companies’ products to Chinese online site Tmall.com (天貓) ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays. Jollywiz, an e-commerce subsidiary of the online game publisher Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子), said in a statement that it is confident that it could help Sunny Hills and Lian Hwa Foods boost their sales performance through its expertise in cross-border e-commerce services.
CHIPMAKERS
Powertech to issue shares
Powertech Technology Inc (力成) yesterday said that its board has approved a proposal to issue about 260 million new common shares to a memorychip subsidiary of China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Inc (清華紫光) for about NT$19.5 billion. The price is set at NT$75 per share, representing a premium of 12.61 percent from the stock’s closing price yesterday of NT$66.6. Tsinghua Unigroup will hold a 25 percent stake in Powertech after its memorychip arm, Tongfang Guoxin Electronics Co Ltd (同方國芯), receives the shares via a Tibetan investment arm.
INSURANCE
Chaoyang to present plan
Chaoyang Life Insurance Co (朝陽人壽) yesterday said it would propose a detailed financial improvement plan to its board on Thursday, which is expected to approve a N$5.05 billion capital increase program, including NT$3.5 billion in cash and NT$1.55 in real-estate assets. The company expects to raise its risk-based capital (RBC) ratio from less than 50 percent to more than 300 percent by March, it said in a statement. The RBC requirement establishes a minimum liquid reserve that protects a financial institution, its customers and the economy by ensuring that the firm has sufficient capital to sustain possible operating losses. The Financial Supervisory Commission dispatched officials to inspect -Chaoyang Life at the beginning of this month in preparation for taking over the troubled firm after it failed to increase its capital and RBC ratio last year.
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