ODM
Wistron sales drop 12%
Wistron Corp (緯創) reported sales of NT$47.53 billion (US$1.51 billion) for last month, down 12.07 percent from a month ago, but up 6.08 percent from July last year. The company attributed the monthly decline in revenues to fewer notebook computer shipments last month from June. Wistron’s accumulated revenues from January to July totaled NT$328.86 billion, falling 3.67 percent from a year ago, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
ELECTRONICS
Asustek sees sales drop
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday posted sales of NT$33.3 billion for last month, down 23.5 percent from June’s sales and 5.8 percent from July last year. The company said in a statement that the revenues of its smart devices dropped last month from a year ago because mass production of new-generation smartphones would start from this month, not last month. It said it expects sales this month and next month to pick up following the launches of its new smartphones and notebook computers. Asustek’s combined revenues rose by 0.43 percent annually to NT$255.93 billion in the first seven months of this year.
CHINA
PPI down 1.7 percent
Producer prices fell at their slowest rate in nearly two years last month, the government said yesterday, a sign of improving conditions in the world’s second-largest economy. The producer price index (PPI), which measures the cost of goods at the factory gate, fell 1.7 percent year-on-year last month, the National Bureau of Statistics said, as a rebound in some commodity prices reduced downward pressures. Protracted declines in the PPI bode ill for industrial prospects and economic growth, as they put off customers, starving companies of business and funds. The country’s PPI has been negative for more than four years, but narrowing declines in the past three months have fueled hopes the nation — a key driver of the world economy — could be reaching the bottom of a painful slowdown. The improvement in PPI “should benefit the corporate sector’s profitability,” researchers with ANZ said in a note.
INVESTMENT
Record inflow to Asia
Asian shares yesterday stood atop one-year peaks as investors’ desperate search for yield drove a record inflow into emerging-market funds, while the British pound slipped to one-month lows on speculation of further policy easing in the UK. Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said the search for yield had led to the largest five-week inflow on record to emerging market debt funds and the longest inflow streak to equity funds in two years. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.1 percent, having already risen for three sessions in a row. Japan’s Nikkei was also attempting a fourth session of gains with a tentative rise of 0.2 percent, while Shanghai stocks were flat. The major data out in Asia was Chinese inflation for last month and it caused few ripples by coming exactly as market forecast at 1.8 percent. The benign result merely confirmed there was plenty of scope for further policy easing if needed. The need for stimulus was clear in Chinese trade flows which disappointed last month amid slack demand both at home and abroad.
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