OIL REFINER
CPC chairman resigns
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油) yesterday announced that chairman Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠) had tendered his resignation, with his position to be taken by president Paul Chen (陳綠蔚) on Friday next week. The announcement marked the first personnel change at the nation’s state-owned enterprises before the incoming Democratic Progressive Party administration takes office on Friday next week. Lin said the decision was part of his career plan and that his move would hand the incoming government some flexibility on personnel issues.
IC DESIGNERS
Ali posts first-quarter loss
Integrated circuit designer Ali Corp (揚智) yesterday reported a first-quarter loss of NT$26 million (US$796,910), or NT$0.09 per share, and that sales dropped 12 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$982 million due to fewer working days during the Lunar New Year holiday. However, sales grew 8 percent year-on-year because of improving demand in most emerging markets and a recovery in pay-TV operator demand. Ali said decreasing product margins in certain segments caused its gross margin to fall 4 percentage points quarter-on-quarter to 38 percent last quarter. Ali shares fell 5.45 percent to close at NT$17.35 in Taipei trading.
CIRCUIT BOARDS
Compeq profit underwhelms
Compeq Manufacturing Co (華通), which produces multilayer and double-sided printed circuit boards, yesterday said overall market weakness and a deteriorating pricing environment caused the company to report weaker-than-expected profit in the first quarter. Net income was NT$262 million, or NT$0.22 per share, with consolidated revenue of NT$9.39 billion and gross margin of 11.63 percent, the company said. Given a similar product mix and weak market demand, the company said sales growth in the second quarter could be relatively flat from the first quarter, while a recovery in sales would emerge in the third quarter at the earliest.
CHIPMAKERS
UMC inks DRAM agreement
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) yesterday said it has inked a technology cooperation agreement with a Chinese semiconductor company to develop DRAM technology. In a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, UMC said has agreed with Fujian Jin Hua Integrated Circuit Co (晉華集成電路) to jointly develop niche DRAM manufacturing technologies, but that it would not be involved in the DRAM manufacturing business. The Chinese firm is to build its own factory, UMC said, adding that the agreement would have a financially positive impact on UMC.
FINANCE
Digital Bitcoin boss detained
The chairman of Digital Bitcoin Co (數位比特) was arrested and handed over to the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office on Tuesday, Criminal Investigation Bureau officials said in Taipei yesterday. The man, identified by police only by his surname, Ho (何), amassed more than NT$10 million and caused losses to 49 customers through fraud, breach of trust and document forgery, police said. In January last year, Ho falsely claimed that major market players wanted to buy bitcoins at high prices, attracting many customers to buy bitcoins. He then changed the company’s server settings and turned his customers’ bitcoins into his own, claiming that his company had been hacked before shutting down his operation, police said.
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