GAMING
Cayenne to list in Taipei
Mobile game distributor Cayenne Ark Mobile Co Ltd (辣椒方舟), an affiliate of Cayenne Entertainment Technology Co (紅心辣椒), is to list today on the Taipei Exchange’s Emerging Stock Board at NT$20 per share. Cayenne Ark chairman Joe Deng (鄧潤澤) yesterday told a news conference that the company has a challenging year ahead due to intensified market competition and the hit mobile game Pokemon Go. The company reported net losses of NT$15.05 million (US$476,900) in the first half of this year, compared with a net income of NT$16.03 million during the same period last year. Deng said the company plans to introduce a new mobile game in Taiwan at the end of this year and four more games next year, making them Cayenne Ark’s main growth drivers next year. Deng declined to offer a revenue forecast for next year.
COSMETICS
Namchow inks skincare MOU
Cooking oil manufacturer Namchow Chemical Industrial Co (南僑化學工業) yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Metal Industries Research and Development Center (金屬工業研究發展中心), marking a further step into the natural skincare market. Under its self-owned brand, the company hopes to distribute high-priced cosmetic products with natural ingredients from Taiwan to global customers, Namchow chairman Alfred Chen (陳飛龍) said at a signing ceremony in Taipei, without giving a schedule.
STEELMAKERS
CSC appoints chairman
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s largest steel mill, said in a press release yesterday that the company’s board approved the appointment of Wong Chao-tung (翁朝棟) as chairman. The board also named vice president Liu Jih-gang (劉季剛) to take over Wong’s position as president. In a separate release, the company reported pretax profit for the first nine months of this year of NT$16.67 billion, soaring 40 percent from the same period last year, after pretax profit of NT$8.83 billion last quarter, its highest quarterly level this year.
SOCIETY
Kaoshiung to host expo
The Maker Wisdom Expo, an event that allows artists and organizations to showcase their work and interact with others, is to take place at the Chung Cheng Martial Arts Stadium in Kaohsiung on Nov. 19 and Nov. 20, organizers said yesterday. Now in its second year, the expo is to have 125 booths set up by 65 schools and businesses for exhibitions, presentations and demonstrations, the Kaohsiung City Government said.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Line reports Q3 profit
Line Corp reported third-quarter profit and revenue that missed analysts’ estimates as the company pushes into advertising to offset slowing growth in its user base. Operating profit was ￥4.9 billion (US$47 million) in the period ended Sept. 30, according to calculations based on nine-month numbers released by Line yesterday, while sales reached ￥35.9 billion in the period. Line said its monthly active users totaled 220 million as of last month, a 3.5 percent increase from a year earlier. That was slightly lower than the previous quarter, when subscribers increased 4.1 percent, and the slowest growth in at least two years. Line expects annual sales to increase in the period ending Dec. 31, helped by advertising revenue. The company did not give a full-year earnings forecast.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) market value closed above US$1 trillion for the first time in Taipei last week, with a raised sales forecast driven by robust artificial intelligence (AI) demand. TSMC saw its Taiwanese shares climb to a record high on Friday, a near 50 percent rise from an April low. That has made it the first Asian stock worth more than US$1 trillion, since PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) briefly reached the milestone in 2007. As investors turned calm after their aggressive buying on Friday, amid optimism over the chipmaker’s business outlook, TSMC lost 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,150
RSS