INVESTMENT
Indonesia to reduce red tape
Taiwanese companies plan to invest US$3 billion in Indonesia’s iron and steel, petrochemical and shipbuilding industries, Indonesia’s Investment Coordinating Board chairman Franky Sibarani said, adding that the board is to simplify procedures for foreign investors to gain permission to conduct business there. It currently takes at least one month to acquire a permit, but Sibarani said the time could hopefully be reduced to just three hours. Taiwanese firms have invested US$1.6 billion in the country over the past five years, he said.
INVESTMENT
Yuanta plans to launch ETFs
Yuanta Securities Investment Trust Co (元大投信) plans to launch exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on the Euro STOXX 50 Index and the Nikkei 225 Index. The investment company applied for accreditation in the two indices with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) on March 4, the TWSE said in a statement. Yuanta’s bid for Euro STOXX 50 Index accreditation is the first of its kind in the nation aimed at the European securities market, the TWSE said.
TELECOMS
CHT approves dividends
Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信) yesterday said its board approved a cash dividend of NT$5.4852 per share for shareholders this year, the highest in five years, after the nation’s largest telecoms operator made NT$5.52 in earnings per share last year. The issuance represents a 5.17 percent dividend yield based on the company’s closing price of NT$106 per share yesterday. Last year, Chunghwa Telecom distributed a cash dividend of NT$4.8564 per share.
PERIPHERALS
Adlink net profit rises 3.1%
Industrial computer peripherals supplier Adlink Technology Inc (凌華) yesterday said net profit last year increased 3.1 percent to NT$609 million (US$18.5 million), but earnings per share fell from NT$3.21 in 2014 to NT$3.03 after a capital increase. Gross and operating margins last year were flat at 41.3 percent and 8.7 percent respectively, although consolidated sales increased 12.7 percent annually to NT$9.07 billion, the company said in a statement. The company’s board has decided to distribute a cash dividend of NT$2.4 to shareholders, with a payout ratio of 79.2 percent and a cash dividend yield of 3.02 percent based on Adlink’s closing price of NT$79.6 yesterday.
SEMICONDUCTORS
VPEC mulls capital reduction
Gallium arsenide wafer foundry Visual Photonics Epitaxy Co (VPEC, 全新光電) yesterday said that it is considering reducing capital as part of efforts to boost its capital efficiency. Company spokesman Chi Hsiao-ling (紀筱玲) said its board agreed to reduce capital by NT$616.35 million, or 25 percent, to boost return on equity. VPEC’s paid-in capital is to be reduced to NT$1.849 billion and shareholders are to receive NT$2.5 per share after they approve the plan on June 21, the company said.
INVESTMENT
CTBC to cancel capital plan
The Financial Supervisory Commission approved a request by CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) to scrap a capital increase plan. CTBC gained the commission’s approval late last year to issue 920 million shares at NT$16.8 per share to bolster its financial structure. However, the company last month applied to the commission to cancel the plan due to a volatile stock market in Taiwan. Shares closed 0.3 percent higher at NT$16.9 in Taipei trading yesterday.
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
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
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
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