CRIME
Ex-official’s term raised
The Taiwan High Court yesterday handed down a heavier prison term for former Financial Supervisory Commission Examination Bureau director-general Lee Chin-chen (李進誠), increasing the sentence from eight months to six years for his involvement in an insider-trading scandal. The court ruled that Lee leaked confidential information about a government probe into Power Quotient International Co (勁永國際) in 2005 to investors, who used the information for profit. The court said Lee could appeal the decision.
STOCK EXCHANGE
Combined sales fall
Companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange saw their combined sales last month decrease from March on a consolidated basis, driven mainly by firms in the oil and gas, optoelectronics and electric wire and fiber industries. Listed companies made a total of NT$2.14 trillion (US$65.76 billion) in revenue last month, down 5.26 percent from a year earlier, the exchange said in a statement yesterday. Among them, 323 businesses saw their total revenue rise annually, while 502 firms reported declining sales, it said. The aggregate sales of the 825 companies listed on the bourse totaled NT$8.52 trillion in the first four months, down 4.94 percent from a year earlier.
CHIPMAKERS
Aspeed reveals acquisition
Aspeed Technology Inc (信驊), which designs chips for servers supporting cloud-computing technology, yesterday announced it had acquired Broadcom Corp's Emulex Pilot operation for US$30 million. The transaction of Emulex's baseboard management controller (BMC) business, is subject to shareholders’ approval at the company’s annual general meeting on June 29, Aspeed said. The deal is expected to close in September.
ELECTRONICS
Hon Hai approves dividend
The board of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday approved a NT$5 dividend distribution plan, which includes a cash dividend of NT$4 per share and a stock dividend of 0.1 percent, based on last year’s earnings per share of NT$9.42. That translates into a dividend payout ratio of 53.07 percent, the highest since 1999, according to company data. The planned dividend distribution suggested a yield of 6.82 percent based on Hon Hai’ closing share price of NT$73.3 in Taipei trading yesterday.
AUTO PARTS
Hota reports net profit
Hota Industrial Manufacturing Co (和大工業) yesterday reported net profit of NT$258.97 million in the first quarter, up 26.78 percent year-on-year, with earnings per share of NT$1.1. The company, which makes gears and shafts for automobiles, attributed the increase to a better product mix and improving gross margin. In the January-to-March quarter, Hota reported total sales of NT$1.43 billion, up 18.54 percent from a year earlier, with gross margin of 38.5 percent.
ENERGY
Naphtha cracker sale mulled
CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said it is still in talks with potential Indonesian buyers to sell a naphtha cracker in Kaohsiung. CPC last year closed the oil refinery, the nation’s fifth naphtha cracker, amid rising awareness of environmental protection in Taiwan and has been seeking to sell it.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day