China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s largest and only integrated steelmaker, yesterday said its net profit skyrocketed 110.9 percent year-on-year to NT$16.04 billion (US$525.8 million) last year, buoyed by soaring global steel prices.
Revenue for the whole of last year increased 2.8 percent to NT$285.05 billion from the previous year, with gross margin up from 7.51 percent to 13.55 percent, company data showed.
The company is to increase its domestic product prices by 6.9 percent for deliveries in the second quarter of this year, after it raised prices by 12.6 percent for the first quarter’s shipments.
CSC said it expects the positive market sentiment to last until the end of the second quarter and its plants would continue to run at full capacity due to customers’ robust demand for steel products.
Based on last year’s earnings, the board yesterday proposed paying a NT$1.4 cash dividend for each preferred share and a NT$0.85 cash dividend for each common share, the Kaohsiung-based company said in a statement.
The proposed dividend payout has to be approved by shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on June 21.
In related news, Chung Hung Steel Corp (中鴻鋼鐵), a subsidiary of CSC, said it would not pay a dividend to shareholders this year due to a cumulative loss of nearly NT$4 billion last year.
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