Stock exchange filings by financial holding companies have indicated a lower level of dividend payouts this year, despite record-high profits the companies made last year.
The nation’s top 15 financial companies’ aggregate net income rose 4.9 percent annually to NT$296.7 billion (US$9.2 billion) last year, as they recovered from the impact of global market volatility in the third quarter of last year.
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) plans to distribute NT$2 in dividends per share, or 32.2 percent of its earnings per share, compared with the NT$3 at a dividend payout ratio of 50.9 percent it distributed last year.
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) is keeping its dividend payout unchanged at NT$2 per share this year, but it is distributing 43.7 percent of its profits, compared with 50.8 percent a year ago.
Jih Sun Financial Holding Co (日盛金控) is leading its domestic peers in dividend payouts, distributing 92.67 percent of the NT$0.58 per share it earned last year.
State-run Hua Nan Financial Holding Co (華南金控) and Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (合庫金控), as well as smaller peers, such as China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控) and E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控), have announced they would distribute more than 80 percent of their earnings from last year.
State-run Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) has raised its payout ratio from 57.6 percent to 63.8 percent this year, with a higher dividend of NT$1.5 per share, compared with NT$1.4 last year.
Meanwhile, Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) plans to significantly raise its dividend payout from NT$0.1 last year to NT$1.39 this year.
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
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],”
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
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