Solar cell maker Gintech Energy Corp (昱晶能源) yesterday posted widening losses for the quarter ended in March, as prices have spiraled amid sluggish demand.
Losses expanded to NT$780 million (US$25.77 million) in the quarter, compared with losses of NT$307 million in the previous quarter, marking the third straight unprofitable quarter.
A year ago, Gintech made net profit of NT$522 million in the same period.
Gross margin worsened to minus-15.4 percent in the period, from minus-7.1 percent in the previous quarter and 13.5 percent a year earlier.
Gintech said it has lowered factory utilization this quarter to cope with the slump and to seize a growth opportunity from a nascent rebound in demand.
“We are seeing promising signs in terms of pricing and profitability improvement in the second quarter,” Gintech said.
Demand from China is gaining momentum ahead of a June 30 solar installation deadline set by the Chinese government, which has helped boost order visibility in the near term, the statement said.
“We expect both demand and pricing to remain solid in the near term,” Gintech said.
Industrial players based primarily in China have become more rational in terms of capacity expansion, which has also helped ease the industry’s volatility, it added.
However, the company has failed to make significant progress turning around its fortunes.
Revenue sank 21.3 percent from NT$1.2 billion in March to NT$941 million last month, a 39.6 percent decline from the same period last year.
Last quarter, revenue dropped 13.7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 30 percent annually to NT$3.42 billion, the statement said.
Local peer Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光能源) also reported poor performance, posting a 26.72 percent decline to NT$485 million in revenue for last month, compared with NT$661 million in March. The figure represented an annual decrease of 68 percent.
Neo Solar attributed last month’s contraction to a strategic shift from unprofitable polysilicon-based production to monosilicon.
The company’s board of directors on Monday approved a plan to dispose of idle facilities and equipment in Miaoli County to reduce costs and better utilize assets, Neo Solar said.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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