Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday said aggregate sales by its four main units continued to dip last month amid falling international crude oil prices.
In addition, the outlook in the near term remains less promising, as downstream clients have maintained a cautious stance toward their inventory levels, the group said.
Last month, the group’s four major units — Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) and Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) — saw their combined sales drop 15.6 percent annually and 9.1 percent monthly to NT$101.99 billion (US$3.04 billion).
Nan Ya Plastics led the decline, announcing that its sales last month slid 2.93 percent monthly and 22.6 percent annually to NT$21.15 billion.
The company attributed the decline to a strategic scaling back of ethylene glycol (EG) production that took place between Dec. 28 last year and Thursday last week, which decreased the company’s sales by NT$1.4 billion.
Meanwhile, the company said it also saw less revenues from plasticizer and bisphenol A (BPA) by NT$370 million in total.
Formosa Petrochemical said its sales last month declined 14.8 percent monthly and 15.1 percent annually to NT$42.06 billion.
The oil refiner said the decline came as global crude oil prices shed US$7.2 per barrel last month compared with the previous month, while its oil refining output last month averaged at about 533,000 barrels per day, about 9,000 barrels lower than December last year.
Volatile oil prices and lower factory utilization rate also caused shipments of Formosa Petrochemical’s olefin products to decrease last month to 640,000 tonnes from 690,000 tonnes in the previous month, the company said.
Formosa Plastics, the group’s flagship company and the nation’s largest producer of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), said sales last month declined 4.7 percent sequentially and 16.6 percent annually to NT$14.16 billion, as its production of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) was scaled back for maintenance to coincide with the expected lull in activities for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Formosa Plastics said its EVA shipments decreased by 10,000 tonnes last month from December last year, slashing sales by NT$460 million, while PVC shipments were 11,000 tonnes less than the previous month to affect sales by NT$300 million.
The company said it has cut product prices to reflect falling raw material costs.
Formosa Chemicals and Fibre, which produces aromatics and styrenics, said its consolidated sales fell 5.9 percent sequentially and 8.6 percent annually to NT$24.63 billion last month, due to falling average selling prices and planned production cuts.
The company said a decrease of 15,000 tonnes in shipments of p-xylene (PX) and o-xylene (OX) products last month affected sales by as many as NT$380 million, while a tendency among clients to hold back inventory procurement of phenol, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polystyrene (PS) and polypropylene (PP) products until the end of the Lunar New Year holiday also dampened sales by NT$220 million, the company added.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in