FOOD & BEVERAGE
Gourmet doubles income
Gourmet Master Co (美食達人), the operator of cafe and bakery chain 85°C (85度C), saw its net income last year doubled to NT$1.14 billion (US$34.60 million) from the previous year’s NT$527 million thanks to the company’s focus on organizational restructuring, cost control and brand building. Earnings per share were NT$8.07 last year, compared with the NT$3.74 recorded a year earlier. Total sales rose from NT$17.92 billion in 2014 to NT$20.46 billion last year, as store remodeling was progressing well in both Taiwan and China, the company said.
GAMING
Gamania sales increase
Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子) on Friday said sales rose 7 percent annually to NT$9.68 billion last year, but net income grew by 316 percent to NT$390 million, the highest in nine years. Earnings per share were NT$2.46, the online games publisher said. Gamania attributed the increases to the launches of several new gaming titles last year, as well as contribution from its e-commerce subsidiary, Jollywiz Digital Technology Co (樂利數位).
MICROCHIPS
VIA swings to profit
Chip designer VIA Technologies Inc (威盛科技) on Friday said it swung into profit last year, thanks to the contribution of non-operating income of NT$2.63 billion. The company reported the first profitable year since 2005, with net profit of NT$823 million or earnings per share of NT$1.72. It still reported a net loss of NT$1.71 billion on an operating basis, with consolidated sales contracting by 27.39 percent to NT$4.73 billion. Last year, the company sold its handset chip subsidiary, VIA Telecom Co (威睿電通), to Intel Corp for an unspecific amount.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by