China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s biggest steelmaker, yesterday posted a 549 percent year-on-year surge in pre-tax net profit on a consolidated basis for the first quarter, buoyed by higher product prices.
Pre-tax profit skyrocketed to NT$5.39 billion (US$178.76 million) in the quarter, compared with NT$830.94 million in the same period last year, according to a company statement.
On an annual basis, last quarter’s sales soared 27.75 percent from NT$64.96 billion to NT$82.98 billion, with operating income up 585 percent from NT$939.5 million to NT$6.43 billion, company statistics showed.
“Soaring international steel demand enabled China Steel to raise prices, which offset higher material costs,” executive vice president Wang Shyi-chin (王錫欽) said by telephone yesterday.
The Kaohsiung-based company boosted its domestic product prices by 6.9 percent for products to be shipped this quarter, after it raised prices by 12.6 percent for first-quarter deliveries.
Asked about the latest price adjustment, the company said it has seen a downward trend in global steel prices since the beginning of this month.
The price of iron ore has dropped 30 percent since the end of last month and reached a six-month low of about US$61 per tonne last week, market data showed.
“We will definitely keep watching the trend of global [material] prices before lifting prices further,” Wang said, declining to give a forecast on product prices.
The nation’s only integrated steelmaker is to announce its price adjustments for third-quarter shipments by the end of next month.
Commenting on sales volume, Wang said that the company expects to deliver nearly 3 million tonnes of steel products this quarter.
Shipments totaled 2.7 tonnes in the January-to-March period, company data showed.
The company saw its net profit soar 110.9 percent year-on-year to NT$16.04 billion for the whole of last year, while revenue rose 2.8 percent to NT$285.05 billion.
Gross margin also improved from 7.51 percent to 13.55 percent, company data showed.
Based on last year’s earnings, the board proposed paying a NT$1.4 cash dividend for each preferred share and a NT$0.85 cash dividend for each common share, a company statement said.
China Steel shares climbed 2.06 percent to close at NT$24.8 in Taipei yesterday, before the earnings announcement.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is