GOVERNMENT
Electricity changes mulled
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) yesterday said the ministry plans to propose a draft amendment to the Electricity Act (電業法) within three months in a bid to accelerate the privatization of the electricity industry. Yang’s remarks came after media reports that enterprises such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Google Inc expressed interest in building their own power plants to avoid power shortage risks. Yang said that given electricity supply challenges, it is good that firms are seeking to build their own power plants. However, amendments to the act would be needed to allow companies to supply electricity for their own use and to sell surplus electricity to Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電).
GAMING
XPEC revenue doubles
Video game developer XPEC Entertainment Inc (樂陞科技) saw its monthly revenue double to NT$210.99 million (US$6.5 million) last month from NT$101.4 million a year earlier, mainly due to sales contributions from its newly acquired local coffee shop chain, Ikari Coffee (怡客咖啡), the company said in a statement on Monday. On a monthly basis, XPEC’s revenue jumped 21.65 percent from the prior month’s NT$173.43 million, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
APPAREL
Eclat, Makalot revenues fall
Textile and garment manufacturers Eclat Textile Co (儒鴻) and Makalot Industrial Co (聚陽實業) both experienced monthly drops in revenue last month, according to company filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Eclat’s revenue contracted 8.91 percent monthly to NT$1.84 billion last month, a 20.61 percent annual decline from last year’s NT$2.32 billion, its filing said. Eclat’s combined revenue from January to last month totaled NT$9.46 billion, expanding 3.19 percent from NT$9.17 billion in the same period last year. Makalot’s revenue fell 11.25 percent monthly to NT$1.42 billion last month and contracted 1.4 percent from NT$1.44 billion a year earlier, its filing said.
SMARTPHONES
Catcher’s sales slump
Catcher Technology Co (可成科技), a metal casing supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones, reported monthly sales of NT$5.87 billion last month, a fall of 14.24 percent year-on-year and 2.61 percent month-on-month. Due to the sluggish sales of iPhones, the firm’s combined revenue in the first five months of this year shrank 8.24 percent annually to NT$28.75 billion, compared with the NT$31.33 billion in the same period last year, a company filing showed. Chairman Allen Hung (洪水樹) told shareholders last month that many of Catcher’s clients are to launch new smartphones and notebooks this month, which would benefit the company’s operations. Hung said Catcher’s business in the second half of this year is expected to outpace the first half.
CHIPMAKERS
Epistar’s woes continue
Epistar Corp (晶電), the nation’s leading LED chipmaker, continued to suffer amid intensifying Chinese competition, experiencing its 13th straight month of declining sales from the year-earlier periods. Epistar’s revenue dropped 4.98 percent to NT$2.15 billion from a year earlier, a company filing said. It also represented a monthly decline of 5.89 percent from the prior month’s NT$2.29 billion. Epistar’s combined revenue fell 8.63 percent to NT$10.5 billion from January to last month, compared with NT$11.49 billion in the same period last year, it said.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six