China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼) yesterday posted a 130.37 percent surge in pretax profit on a consolidated basis for last year, due to improving sentiment in global steel markets and soaring international steel prices.
Pretax profit surged to NT$21.9 billion (US$698.34 million) last year, compared with NT$9.51 billion in 2015, the nation’s only integrated steelmaker said in a statement.
Operating profit last year skyrocketed 213.36 percent from NT$8.12 billion in 2015 to NT$25.4 billion, company data showed.
Shipments totaled 11.13 million tonnes, a 16.8 percent increase from 9.53 million tonnes a year earlier.
CSC chairman Wong Chao-tung (翁朝棟) last week provided an optimistic business outlook for this year, with the Chinese-Language United Daily News quoting him as saying that global steel prices were expected to remain high in the current quarter.
The Kaohsiung-based steelmaker said that it would raise steel prices by 12.6 percent for deliveries this quarter, due to rising costs.
Among CSC’s major products, the price of benchmark hot-rolled items is to increase by NT$2,265 per tonne, while the price of hot-dipped galvanized steel is to rise by NT$1,909 per tonne.
The company is to announce steel prices for the second quarter by the end of this month.
In related news, state-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday announced that it would not change its prices for liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas this month, in an effort to ensure the stability of commodity prices following the Lunar New Year holiday.
CPC said that it would absorb rising material prices this month and reflect the increases in subsequent months.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day