With its three main product lines’ growth momentum recovering, Pegatron Corp (和碩) expects its business to pick up significantly in the second half and lift its full-year performance.
“The second half of the year would represent the peak for Pegatron’s operations [this year]. Our expanded production capacity is in place,” chief executive officer S.J. Liao (廖賜政) told reporters yesterday after the company’s annual general meeting in Taipei.
Pegatron, one of Apple Inc’s iPhone assemblers, invested US$400 million over the past few months, mainly to purchase new equipment to boost its Chinese plants’ production capacity for communications, consumer electronics and computing products, Liao said.
This year’s capital expenditure was twice the size of last year’s US$200 million and was the largest since 2013, the company said.
“We have almost completed the execution of the US$400 million capital expenditure. The expanded production capacity will start contributing to revenues in the next three months,” Liao said.
To cope with the manufacturing expansion, Pegatron is increasing its workforce in China and has been recruiting staff since the Lunar New Year holiday, Liao said.
Pegatron chief financial officer Charles Lin (林秋炭) said the company expects to have 40,000 to 50,000 more workers in the second half compared with the first half amid an anticipated spike in demand during the peak season.
Pegatron’s revenue jumped 18.16 percent annually to NT$78.63 billion (US$2.59 billion) last month, while cumulative sales in the first five months of the year rose 2.88 percent to NT$399.31 billion.
Liao said he was optimistic that the annual growth momentum would extend through the rest of the year, with full-year sales increasing from last year’s NT$1.15 trillion.
Asked to comment on whether government efficiency would affect Pegatron’s desire to invest in Taiwan, Pegatron chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) said the company is planning to increase investment at its Taoyuan plant to meet contact lens subsidiary Pegavision Corp’s (晶碩) growing business scope.
“Action speaks louder. We take action to express our willingness to continue investing in Taiwan,” Tung said.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) last week slammed the government bureaucracy, saying he would not invest in Taiwan unless it is necessary.
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
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
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],”