LIGHTING
Lextar posts higher sales
Lextar Corp (隆達), an LED chip manufacturing arm of AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), on Monday said its sales last month expanded year-on-year and month-on-month on the back of the increasing demand for LED backlight units and lighting applications due to the traditional peak season. Revenue was NT$1.18 billion (US$37.6 million) last month, up 2.56 percent year-on-year and 13.46 percent month-on-month, the company said in a press statement. However, Lextar’s accumulated revenue in the first eight months of this year fell 1.37 percent to NT$9.21 billion, compared with NT$9.34 billion last year, according to the company’s data. Lextar said it would continue to focus on producing backlight units used in higher-end panels to seek higher profitability.
BANKING
More investment planned
Standard Chartered Bank (Taiwan) Ltd (渣打台灣銀行) yesterday said that it would continue to invest in Taiwan as its parent company implements its “bank 3.0” transition toward the digitization of financial services. Taiwan has risen to the banks’ top three overseas markets in terms of earnings, along with Hong Kong and Singapore. It plans to upgrade a number of its branches with enhanced digital services before the end of this year, the company said. The branches are to be staffed by 60 newly accredited branch sales and service executives, who have received nine months of training in digital financial services. “We plan to improve our coverage of the mass markets by leveraging the cost advantages of digitized services, as well as enhancing priority advisory services for our high-net-worth clients,” head of retail banking Kate Lin (林素真) said.
INSURANCE
Shin Kong to sell life stake
Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) yesterday announced that its board of directors has approved a plan to sell its 25 percent stake in Shin Kong-HNA Life Insurance Co Ltd (新光海航人壽), a joint venture it established with China’s HNA Group (海航集團) in 2009, to a number of Chinese asset-management firms for about 375 million yuan (US$56.15 million). In November last year, Chinese regulators ordered the venture to halt new-policy sales as its claim-paying ability was inadequate. Shin Kong said that the shortcoming was caused by delayed capital allocations from HNA Group.
ELECTRONICS
Phison pretax profit surges
Phison Electronics Corp (群聯), a NAND flash controller supplier, yesterday said its pretax profit surged 20.08 percent year-on-year to an historical high of NT$592 million. That translated into earnings per share of NT$3. Phison said rising demand for solid-state disk storage and controllers for consumer electronics helped boost last month’s pretax profit and revenue. Phison expects operations to improve next quarter due to seasonal uptick in demand. In the first eight months, pretax profit rose 6.56 percent year-on-year to NT$3.33 billion, the company said.
PANEL MAKERS
Innolux borrows NT$35bn
Innolux Corp (群創), the nation’s largest LCD panel maker, yesterday said it had inked a syndicated loan worth NT$35 billion with 15 local lenders, including Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) and CTBC Bank Co (中國信託銀行). It is one of the largest loans arranged by a local electronics firm this year. The firm plans to use the loan to repay debt, replenish operational spending and finance the development of new technology.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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