TAXES
Revenue reaches NT$233bn
The nation collected NT$233.9 billion (NT$7.365 billion) in tax revenue last month, an increase of 21.2 percent from a year earlier, mainly due to a surge in corporate income taxes, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday. Corporate income taxes reached NT$34.1 billion, jumping 86.4 percent from the same period last year as the local economy improved, the ministry said. Stock transaction taxes retreated 14 percent year-on-year to NT$5.4 billion as risk appetite remained soft, the ministry said. For the first nine months of the year, tax revenue totaled NT$1.7 trillion, a 5.8 percent increase from a year earlier and exceeding the budget target by 6.6 percent, the ministry said.
STOCKS
THSRC issue price set
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) has settled on an issue price for its Oct. 27 main board listing of NT$15.13, underwriter Fubon Securities Co (富邦證券) said yesterday. The price was determined after the underwriter held an auction for the 16 million common shares to be issued in the listing. The final issuance price was much higher than the NT$11.5 per share tentatively set in a prospectus filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Monday last week. The auction ran from Thursday last week to Tuesday and had a floor price of NT$11.64, Fubon Securities said. As the issue price is higher than NT$11.5, THSRC is expected to generate a higher working capital.
RESTAURANTS
Tai Tong sales increase
Tai Tong Food & Beverage Group (瓦城泰統集團), the operator of three restaurant chains with 95 outlets in Taiwan, posted NT$288.7 million in sales for last month, up 14.5 percent from a year earlier. Aggregate sales in the first nine months of this year totaled NT$2.95 billion, a 13.2 percent increase from the same period last year, Tai Tong said in a statement. The company is upbeat about sales in the fourth quarter, supported by the traditional peak season, the statement said.
PAYMENT SERVICES
Yahoo, CTBC launch Yapee
Yahoo Taiwan Holding Ltd (雅虎) and CTBC Bank Co (中國信託銀行) yesterday jointly launched the Yapee (易付) third-party payment service that aims to achieve a comprehensive online-to-offline shopping experience. The service is secured by CTBC Bank’s enterprise-class authentication, as well as real-name registration of users, the companies said. Transactions are also backed by an escrow service, where funds are held by Yapee to minimize disputes between sellers and buyers. In addition, the service accepts payments from a variety of sources, including credit cards, bank accounts, as well as cash payments to convenience store cashiers, they said.
ELECTRONICS
Vive sales reach 140,000
More than 140,000 Vive virtual reality (VR) headsets have been sold worldwide since the product made its debut in March, HTC Corp (宏達電) chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) told China’s leading VR platform 87870.com earlier this week. Wang’s remarks came after Wang Tsung-ching (汪叢青), head of HTC Vive China, said in August that sales of the devices had exceeded 100,000 at the time. Vive is one of HTC’s gambits to diversify from its core smartphone market in the hope of generating a new revenue stream to turn around its loss-making business.
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