MANUFACTURING
Sector recovering: TIER
The local manufacturing sector showed signs of a recovery in April, as the index that gauges the climate of the sector flashed yellow-blue for the first time in 12 months, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) said yesterday. The composite index rose from 9.14 points in March to 10.68 points in April, flashing yellow-blue, indicating a recovery, the institute said. Among the five sub-indices, four showed signs of improving — business environment, raw materials, demand and pricing — while the operating costs sub-index fell from the previous month, the institute said.
COMPACT DISCS
Higher demand boosts CMC
CMC Magnetics Corp (中環), the nation’s largest maker of recordable compact discs, yesterday said revenue for this year would be higher than last year on the back of strong order visibility. CMC chairman Bob Wong (翁明顯) said demand is expected to accelerate this year after several companies decided to withdraw from the market. That demand allowed CMC to raise its prices by between 5 percent and 10 percent earlier this quarter, Wong said. The company reported a net loss of NT$387.97 million (US$11.9 million), or a loss per share of NT$0.19, in the first quarter, with revenue of NT$2.799 billion and gross margin of 4.35 percent.
LIFE INSURANCE
Mercuries value grows
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽保險) yesterday released its embedded value for last year, with the figure estimated to have grown 18 percent year-on-year to NT$107.66 billion. The updated figures translated into an embedded value per share of NT$67.8 based on the number of common shares in circulation, up NT$0.5 from the previous year, the company said. The embedded value — referring to the insurer’s present value of future profits plus adjusted net asset value — is an important indicator of a life insurer’s future profitability and financial standing. The company also reported net profit of NT$179 million for the first quarter of this year, or earnings per share of NT$0.11. Gross premiums totaled NT$41.3 billion in the first quarter, down 4 percent from the previous year, with first-year premiums decreasing 21.9 percent to NT$10.7 billion, the company said.
AIRLINES
TransAsia president dies
TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空) president Chen Wei-chau (陳葦洲) died yesterday after suffering a heart attack, the company said. TransAsia chairman Vincent Lin (林明昇) expressed sorrow over Chen’s death and said Chen had made great efforts to improve aviation safety since he joined the company in October last year. Thanks to Chen’s efforts, the carrier’s flight operations quality assurance has reached 99.8 percent and the dispatch reliability of its Airbus A320 and A330 aircraft has surpassed the global standard, Lin said. Chen was born in 1954.
ELECTRONICS
Panasonic to ditch TV panels
Panasonic Corp shares yesterday surged 3.63 percent to close at ¥1,031.5 in Tokyo trading after a report said it would stop producing LCD displays for TVs. The company confirmed the report, saying it would stop TV panel production by September as part of its strategy to focus on more profitable businesses. Panasonic has been struggling to make money in the business, as it competes against lower-cost rivals overseas.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by