BANKING
Offshore units’ assets rise
The 62 offshore banking units (OBUs) of banks operating in Taiwan posted total assets of US$200.992 billion last month, up US$5.89 billion from the previous month, the central bank said in a statement yesterday. The OBUs of 38 local banks held US$177.366 billion in assets, while foreign banks’ 24 OBUs had US$23.626 billion in assets, the central bank said, without elaborating on the reason for the increase in total assets. At the end of last month, the primary uses of funds of all OBUs were discounts and loans, which amounted to US$79.429 billion, or 39.5 percent of total assets, the statement said. The main sources of funds were vostro accounts, head office and branches, which amounted to US$87.893 billion, or 43.7 percent of total liabilities, it said.
CHIPMAKERS
Winbond reports income fall
Memorychip maker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) yesterday reported its net income was NT$687 million (US$22.7 million) in the first quarter, down 17 percent from the previous quarter, with earnings per share of NT$0.19. On a consolidated basis, total sales in the quarter reached NT$10.425 billion, down 3 percent from the previous quarter, with gross margin of 29 percent. As far as its memory business is concerned, revenue in the first quarter from specialty DRAM accounted for 44 percent of its total sales, Winbond said in a press release. However, specialty DRAM revenue fell 11 percent from the previous quarter due to capacity allocation, the company said. To finance its technology migration plans, the company said it plans up to NT$17.4 billion in capital expenditure this year, up from NT$16.6 billion it announced in February.
CHIPMAKERS
Micron appoints new head
Micron Technology Inc on Thursday announced that its board appointed Sanjay Mehrotra as president and chief executive officer, effective from May 8. Mehrotra is to succeed chief executive officer Mark Durcan and joins Micron at a time of increasing opportunity for memory and storage technologies and solutions as the key enablers for the next generation of computing architectures, the company said in a statement. Durcan is to serve as an adviser to the company until early August, the company said.
WATER TREATMENT
FWEE approves dividend
Forest Water Environment Engineering Ltd (FWEE, 山林水工程), which provides engineering services for industrial water treatment, on Thursday said its board approved a cash dividend of NT$3.2 per share, compared with last year’s NT$3. The proposed dividend translated into a payout ratio of 81 percent and a yield of 4.86 percent based on the stock’s closing price of NT$65.8 in Taipei trading on Thursday. The company, a subsidiary of Rich Development Inc (力麒建設), reported net profit last year increased 42 percent to NT$488 million, with sales expanding 45.8 percent to NT$2.27 billion, buoyed by increasing demand in China’s sewage treatment market.
SHIPPING
Yang Ming to open offices
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) yesterday said it has established a wholly owned subsidiary in the Philippines, Yang Ming Shipping Philippines Inc, as the company expects rapid expansion to continue in the Southeast Asian market. Yang Ming said that the new company will begin to provide services on Monday next week at offices in Manila, Cebu and Davao, with Eddie Yi (易德華) its first managing director.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the