Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) yesterday posted 2.1 percent annual growth in net profit for last month primarily on lower 4G equipment depreciation costs, making it the most profitable telecom operator among its local peers.
Net profit expanded to NT$3.82 billion (US$106 million) last month, compared with NT$3.74 billion in February last year, according to a company statement.
That translated into earnings per share of NT$0.49, up from NT$0.48 a year ago.
Operating expenses fell 3.1 percent to NT$14.49 billion last month, from NT$14.95 billion in the year prior, thanks to lower hardware and depreciation costs primarily for its 4G equipment and license fee, as well as lower Internet interconnection fees.
Revenue inched up 0.2 percent annually to NT$19.13 billion last month from NT$19.09 billion in February last year.
Chunghwa Telecom said last month’s results helped it make good progress in hitting its earnings per share target of NT$1.25 for the first quarter. The company’s accumulated earnings per share of NT$1.05 in the first two months achieve 84 percent of its quarterly projection.
Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s No. 2 telecom company, yesterday reported an annual growth rate of 8 percent in net profit to NT$1.24 billion for last month, from NT$1.16 billion in February last year, a company statement said.
Earnings per share climbed to NT$0.46 from NT$0.42, the statement showed. That brought the company’s earnings per share in the first two months to NT$0.92, reaching 76 percent of its EPS projection of NT$1.21 for the current quarter.
The growth “mainly came from profit improvement from mobile business and from steady profit increase from its cable TV and retail business,” Taiwan Mobile spokesperson Rosie Yu (俞若奚) said.
Revenue dropped 0.42 percent to NT$9.43 billion last month from NT$9.47 billion one year earlier.
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation’s No. 3 telecom operator, posted an annual decrease of 4.73 percent in net profit to NT$947 million, or NT$0.29 a share, last month, compared with NT$994 million, or NT$0.3 a share, a year earlier.
From January to last month, earnings per share totaled NT$0.61. Revenue shrank 6.8 percent to NT$7.68 billion last month from NT$8.24 billion in February last year.
Far EasTone said the number of its 4G users has outpaced that of 3G users, accounting for more than 50 percent of the company’s post-paid mobile subscribers.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to