FINANCIAL SERVICES
Bank boosts Mega income
State-run Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) posted net income of NT$2.68 billion (US$87.4 million) last month, thanks to its banking arm, Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行), generating NT$2.29 billion, or 85.67 percent of the profit, the conglomerate said in a statement yesterday. The securities, bills finance and insurance units contributed NT$21 million, NT$236 million and NT$17 million respectively, the statement said. Mega Financial posted net income of NT$7.4 billion in the first quarter, or earnings per share of NT$0.54, it said.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
CTBC income up 19 percent
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) posted net income of NT$2.92 billion last month, driven by stable growth in its core businesses, the bank-focused conglomerate said in a statement yesterday. Banking operations saw stable improvement, while margin related to investments by its life insurance arm made headway, the group said, adding that profit last month was up 19 percent compared with February when there were fewer working days. CTBC posted a profit of NT$11.02 billion in the first quarter, or earnings per share of NT$0.52, the statement said. The conglomerate said it expects growth to be sustained in the second quarter.
ELECTRONICS
Delta president to resign
The board of Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday approved the resignation of president and chief operating officer Johnson Lee (李忠傑) and said Lee’s positions would be taken by senior vice president and general manager of industrial automation Simon Chang (張訓海) from July 3. Lee’s departure is due to personal career planning, Delta said in a statement. The board also approved an organizational adjustment to divide its core business into three main categories — power electronics, automation and infrastructure — from May 2. The purpose of the reorganization is to better respond to rapid growth in global markets and enhance the company’s growth momentum, Delta chairman Yency Hai (海英俊) said in the statement.
BICYCLE MAKERS
Strong NT dollar hurts sales
Giant Manufacturing Co Ltd (巨大機械), the nation’s largest bicycle maker, yesterday reported sales of NT$5.27 billion for last month, down 5.08 percent year-on-year. In the first quarter, accumulated sales fell 5.4 percent to NT$13.5 billion from the same period last year, the company said in a statement. Giant, which sells its products in more than 80 nations, attributed the decline to the deprecation of the euro and the yuan against the New Taiwan dollar.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
SinoPac takes Huishan hit
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) yesterday said its exposure to troubled Huishan Dairy Holdings Co (中國輝山乳業) is limited, as its shares in the company are owned by its brokerage clients in Hong Kong, but are not on the company’s books. Trading of Huishan Dairy shares was suspended in Hong Kong last month following a 85 percent plunge and SinoPac Financial was reported to be facing huge losses. However, SinoPac Financial said that it would allocate provisions of about HK$89 million (US$11.34 million) as its Hong Kong-based subsidiaries had provided HK$342 million in margin loans to their clients. The provision has led to a NT$171 million loss at SinoPac Financial’s brokerage firm, the company said. The company posted earnings of NT$76 million for last quarter, down from NT$347 million the previous year.
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
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
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