INTERNET
Momo’s net income down
Momo.com Inc (富邦媒), an Internet, television and catalogue shopping subsidiary of Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), yesterday posted a weaker-than-expected net income of NT$252.63 million (US$7.98 million) for last quarter. The earnings result is down 2.51 percent from NT$259.16 million a year ago and down 14.89 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$296.85 million. Momo attributed the decline to softer-than-expected demand from shoppers. The company said it expects revenue to increase this quarter from a quarter ago, driven by the company’s anniversary sales, Singles’ Day promotion and demand for Christmas.
ELECTRONICS
Flexium income skyrockets
Flexible printed circuit board supplier Flexium Interconnect Inc (台郡) yesterday said its net income grew 602.9 percent to NT$724 million last quarter from the previous quarter on the back of the rising demand for Apple Inc’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus smartphones. However, the figure was down 19.5 percent from a year ago, the company said. Earnings per share were NT$2.71 last quarter, with sales of NT$5.72 billion, up 65.6 percent quarter-on-quarter. Due to higher utilization, gross margin and operating margin last quarter rose to 25.1 percent and 18.16 percent respectively, the company said. For this quarter, the company expects sales to be higher than last quarter, while profit margins would improve further on a better product mix.
ENTERTAINMENT
XPEC asked to restate report
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday said game developer XPEC Entertainment Inc (樂陞科技) must restate its financial report for the second quarter of the year, after the company confirmed it had not received full payment for the sale of Tiny Piece Co, a Chinese mobile-game developer, by June 30. Securities and Futures Bureau Director-General Wang Yung-hsin (王詠心) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that XPEC must restate its financial statement within 20 days and book investment write-off over the deal rather than investment gains, or risks punishment from the commission.
ECONOMY
GDP to grow 2 percent
The nation’s GDP is likely to see a 2 percent annual growth for last quarter, after the latest government data showed a better-than-expected industrial production for last month, DBS Bank said in a report on Tuesday. That would be the second consecutive quarter of growth in industrial production and marks a significant increase compared with the 0.7 percent increase in the previous quarter, DBS said. However, GDP growth is expected to remain below its potential last quarter, as weakness in local-oriented service providers are to offset the recovery in the externally-driven manufacturing sector, DBS said.
BICYCLES
Manufacturers cautioned
Taiwanese bicycle makers should be cautious about their business outlook, despite improving exports of bicycle parts in Japan, Credit Suisse Group AG said in a note to investors yesterday. The recovery of Japanese exports of bicycle parts is driven by an increasing need for high-end products, while the demand for low and mid-end bikes is still weak, Credit Suisse said. The nation’s largest bicycle maker, Giant Manufacturing Co Ltd (巨大機械), saw its sales drop 5.7 percent annually in the first nine months of the year, company data showed.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to