MANUFACTURERS
Compeq expects revenue fall
Compeq Manufacturing Co (華通), which produces multilayer and double-sided printed circuit boards, yesterday said revenue for this quarter would be lower than last quarter because of the effects of major clients’ product transitions and seasonal weakness. The company made the remarks after reporting stronger-than-expected results for the first quarter. Net income was NT$398 million (US$13.17 million) in the January-to-March quarter, up 51.9 percent year-on-year, with earnings per share of NT$0.33. Consolidated revenue grew 19.44 percent annually to NT$11.214 billion, while gross margin improved from 11.63 percent to 13.11 percent over the period, the company said. As clients are to prepare for the launch of Apple Inc’s new iPhones in the second half, the company said a recovery in sales would emerge in July at the earliest.
CHIPMAKERS
GUC expects growth
Chip designer Global Unichip Corp (GUC, 創意電子) yesterday said it expects stable growth in revenue and earnings this year, adding that it is targeting artificial intelligence, cloud technology and data storage to boost growth momentum. Global Unichip president Chen Chao-chein (陳超乾) told the company’s annual general meeting in Hsinchu that the market situation has been improving over the past three to six months and there is a growing consensus in the industry on how to deal with applications that require more intense data and machine learning. Shareholders approved a company plan to distribute cash dividends of NT$3.5 per share based on last year’s earnings per share of NT$4.11. Last year, net income grew 11.5 percent annually to NT$551 million and revenue increased 20 percent to NT$9.29 billion, while gross margin decreased by 2.6 percentage points to 25.7 percent, company data showed.
TRANSPORTATION
Gogoro eyes Paris debut
Electric scooter maker Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) yesterday said it is working with strategic partner Coup Mobility GmbH — a subsidiary of Bosch — to launch electric scooter rental services in Paris this summer as part of the Taiwanese firm’s strategy to increase its global presence. Gogoro is to station 600 of its SmartScooters in the city and people can use Coup’s mobile application to access the rental service, Gogoro said in a statement. Gogoro collaborated with Coup to provide an electric scooter sharing system for 200 SmartScooters in Berlin in August last year, which marked Gogoro’s entry into the European market.
INDUSTRY
FPG’s Wangs to withdraw
Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday said its founding Wang (王) family is to withdraw from the nine-member management team next month in an effort to separate ownership from management. The new management team would consist of professionals from the group’s five major units, including Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) and Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼廠), the group said in a statement. The decision was made to enhance the group’s sustainable development and to train successors, the statement said. The younger Wangs — including William Wong (王文淵), Susan Wang (王瑞華), Wilfred Wang (王文潮) and Sandy Wang (王瑞瑜) — have been in charge of the 63-year-old group since its founder, Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), retired in 2006.
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