Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday said it is upbeat about its growth momentum for this quarter on the back of stabilizing global oil prices and recovering demand.
“The market’s consensus is that oil prices would gradually stabilize, which would benefit the sales of petrochemical products,” Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) told a news conference.
Formosa Petrochemical forecast global crude oil prices would be between US$37 and US$45 per barrel this quarter, higher than Dubai’s crude oil price last month, which was US$35 per barrel.
Last quarter, the group’s four major units — Formosa Petrochemical, 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 net income rise 99.2 percent annually to NT$28.29 billion (US$873.53 million).
Combined revenues dropped 15 percent year-on-year to NT$308.52 billion last quarter, due to relatively low oil prices compared with the same period last year.
Lin said that although low oil prices dragged down the group’s combined revenues, it benefited the gross margin of its products and led to an increased net income last quarter.
Among the four units, Formosa Petrochemical led the increase, reporting a net income rise of 831 percent annually to NT$10.45 billion last quarter, company data showed.
Formosa Chemicals and Fibre’s net profit jumped 355 percent year-on-year to NT$6.77 billion during the January-to-March quarter, the firm said.
Formosa Plastics posted a 56.8 percent annual increase in net income last quarter to NT$5.71 billion, while Nan Ya Plastics said that its net income fell 32.5 percent annually to NT$5.37 billion.
Looking ahead, Lin said Formosa Petrochemical’s revenue this quarter is expected to benefit from healthy demand from downstream suppliers and rising average selling prices.
Formosa Chemicals and Fibre said it expects revenue this quarter would be flattish from last quarter, as two of its plants in Taiwan and China are scheduled to have regular annual maintenance from this month.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”