The four major units of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday reported combined revenue of NT$105.7 billion (US$3.36 billion) for last month, a 5.2 percent decrease from July and a 4 percent drop from the same period last year.
The four units are Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化); Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠); Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) and Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠).
In the first eight months of the year, the group saw its combined revenue decrease 13.6 percent from the same period last year to NT$860.8 billion, company data showed.
On a monthly basis, the only unit to report an increase in sales was Nan Ya Plastics Corp, the plastic manufacturing arm of the group.
The company yesterday posted revenue of NT$23.2 billion for last month, up by 2.1 percent from July and 0.6 percent from the same period last year.
“The increase in revenue was the result of steady demand for electronics materials and polyester products,” Nan Ya Plastics chairman Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) said, adding that only the sales of petrochemicals decreased last month.
Formosa Petrochemical, the nation’s only privately owned oil refiner, posted revenue of NT$41.7 billion for last month, a decrease of 9.1 percent from July and 10 percent year-on-year.
“Our olefin factories were undergoing scheduled maintenance last month, which depressed production volume, “ Formosa Petrochemical president Tsao Mihn (曹明) told a news conference.
Formosa Chemicals, a supplier of aromatics and styrene, reported sales lof NT$26.5 billion, down 5.1 percent from July, but up 3.5 percent on a yearly basis.
A plant based in Ningbo was shut down temporarily due to the G20 summit, which impacted the company’s sales, Formosa Chemicals president Hong Fu-yuan (洪福源) told reporters.
Formosa Plastics Corp, the nation’s largest producer of polyvinyl chloride, reported a 4 percent monthly decline in revenue to NT$14.2 billion last month, representing a 5.7 percent annual decline.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
RSS