FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Nation’s reserves rise
Foreign-exchange reserves in the nation reached US$431.60 billion at the end of last month, an increase of US$2.78 billion from the previous month, the central bank said yesterday. The bank attributed the increase to the appreciation of the euro and other reserve currencies against the US dollar. In addition, foreign-exchange reserves also benefited from the bank’s management strategies, it said.
SMARTPHONES
HTC reports sales drop
Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said sales last month dropped to NT$4.14 billion (US$127.6 million) from NT$4.2 billion in February. On an annual basis, sales last month showed a 79.3 percent decline, reaching the lowest monthly result in 11 years. The company’s accumulated sales in the first three months of the year contracted 64.31 percent year-on-year to NT$14.82 billion. While HTC released its virtual-reality gadget Vive on Feb. 21, contribution from this new business is not expected to offset the fast-deteriorating smartphone segment this year, Daiwa-Cathay Capital Markets Co (大和國泰證券) said in a note on March 21.
TOUCH INTERFACES
TPK reveals revenue figures
TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), a supplier of touch-enabled user interface solutions for small and medium-sized displays, yesterday reported that revenue increased 27.6 percent to NT$6.91 billion last month from the previous month, but the figure was 34.9 percent lower than a year earlier. That brought the company’s revenue last quarter to NT$21.24 billion, representing declines of 38.3 percent quarter-on-quarter and 26.6 percent year-on-year. CIMB Securities Ltd said revenue could increase by a mid-single-digit percentage in the second quarter from the first quarter, driven by touch module demand for Apple Inc’s new products.
CHIP PACKAGERS
SPIL hits two-year low
Chip packager and tester Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密) yesterday said its revenue for the first quarter fell 7.24 percent to NT$19.299 billion from a year earlier, the lowest in eight quarters. As order visibility has extended into this month and next month, analysts said SPIL might provide a decent guidance for its quarterly sales growth for the second quarter, with the company to hold an investors’ conference on April 28.
CHIPMAKERS
Lextar revenue rises
Lextar Electronics Corp (隆達電子), which manufactures upstream LED chips and provides downstream packaging services, yesterday reported NT$1.21 billion in revenue for last month, up 2.81 percent year-on-year and 20.88 percent month-on-month. Consolidated revenue from January to last month declined 3.19 percent from the previous year to NT$3.39 billion. The company said it remains positive about this year's outlook, citing its improving cost structure and new clients in both LED lighting and backlight units, as well as its entry into the LED auto segment.
AUTO PARTS
Cub Elecparts reports rise
Automobile parts maker Cub Elecparts Inc (為升) yesterday reported record revenue of NT$302 million for last month, bringing its total revenue for the first quarter to NT$832 million, up 26.3 percent from the same period last year. Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) attributed the strong performance to continuous shipments of tire pressure monitoring systems and contribution from its acquisition of a 51 percent stake in Harbinger Technology Corp (至鴻), which focuses on car security systems.
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