HOTELS
Ambassador to pay dividend
Ambassador Hotel Ltd (國賓大飯店) shareholders yesterday approved plans to distribute a NT$0.7 per share cash dividend from net income of NT$46 million (US$1.52 million) last year. The results translated into earnings per share of NT$1.16, the highest in the past five years, company data showed. The company expects conditions to be tough this year, with more peers to enter the field, as the number of inbound travelers is shrink. Ambassador Hotel has no intention of adding outlets this year, but will focus on improving its service to retain guests and attract new customers, it said.
CHIPMAKERS
Winbond sees short supply
Memorychip maker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) yesterday said that short supply of NOR flash memory chips would last through the middle of next year, citing strong demand. Prices for NOR flash memorychips would also continue to climb, company chairman Arthur Chiao (焦佑鈞) told reporters. Winbond, which has a 30 percent share of the world’s NOR flash market, would benefit from the latest industrial boom, Chiao said. Shareholders yesterday approved a cash dividend of NT$0.6 per share, the first cash dividend in eight years. The company posted profit of NT$2.9 billion last year, representing earnings per share of NT$0.81.
ENERGY
Heat prompts consumption
Electricity consumption yesterday attained its second-highest level for the year as temperatures soared to nearly 36°C nationwide, despite afternoon showers, state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said. Electricity consumption peaked at 34.5 million kilowatts at 1:44pm, with the operating reserve margin falling to 4.55 percent, or 1.57 million kilowatts, Taipower said. The low reserve level triggered the sixth “orange” warning of this month. An orange warning is issued when the operating reserve margin falls below 6 percent. The highest power consumption this year was on Monday, at 34.58 million kilowatts, the company said.
TAXATION
VAT filings decline
Value added tax (VAT) refunds filed by foreign visitors to Taiwan last year fell 22 percent from a year earlier due to a drop in the number of Chinese tourists, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. The ministry said that as Chinese tourists tend to buy luxury goods and souvenirs, the decline in their arrivals served as the major reason for the fall in VAT refunds. VAT refunds filed last year totaled NT$1.69 billion, marking the first decline in history, while the number of VAT refund applications fell 1.3 percent year-on-year to 1.62 million, ministry data showed. The decline came after the number of Chinese tourists fell to 3.51 million from 4.18 million in 2015.
CURRENCY
NT drops against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar dropped NT$0.051 against the US dollar yesterday to close at NT$30.227 on expectations that the US Federal Reserve would raise key interest rates at its policymaking meeting yesterday, dealers said. Further selling by foreign institutional investors on the local equity market dampened sentiment toward the NT dollar, sending the US dollar to its highest since May 10, when the US currency closed at NT$30.266, they said. It was the sixth consecutive session that the greenback has gained against the NT dollar.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by