ELECTRONICS
Inventec revenue hits high
Contract electronics maker Inventec Corp (英業達) yesterday said that revenue last month reached a 41-month high on rising shipments of servers, notebook computers and handheld devices. Revenue expanded 4.19 percent year-on-year and 21.27 percent month-on-month to NT$41.898 billion (US$1.37 billion), bringing cumulative revenue in the first six months of this year to NT$210.87 billion, up 3.53 percent from the same period last year, the company said.
PANELMAKERS
Innolux sales jump 26.5%
Innolux Corp (群創), the nation’s largest flat-panel maker, reported that second-quarter sales soared by double-digits from a year earlier on the back of a spike in product prices. The company posted NT$84.5 billion in consolidated sales, jumping 26.5 percent from a year earlier, but declining 1.8 percent quarterly. Innolux said it last quarter shipped 29.13 million large-sized panels, up 8.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, while shipments of small-sized panels dropped 4.3 percent to 59.17 million units. Smaller rival HannStar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶) on Thursday reported second-quarter sales of NT$4.71 billion, down 24.52 percent from NT$6.24 billion in the first quarter.
FINANCE
CTBC income soars 88.65%
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) on Thursday said that net income last month rose 88.65 percent monthly to NT$5.32 billion, bringing cumulative earnings in the first half of the year to NT$19.39 billion, up 35.59 percent from the same period last year. Earnings per share in the six-month period were NT$1. The company attributed rising profits to slower appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar and sound investment performance. Earnings contribution from insurance unit Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽保險) over the first half of the year rose 77 percent annually, it added.
CONSUMER GOODS
Taiwan Paiho sales jump
Taiwan Paiho Ltd (台灣百和), which supplies shoelaces and elastic tape, reported that sales last month soared 17.7 percent annually to NT$957.03 million, driven by rising demand for four-way stretchable elastic bands. In the first half of the year, sales totaled NT$5.66 billion, an increase of 9.25 percent year-on-year, the firm said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday.
TECHNOLOGY
Egis revenue up 759 percent
Fingerprint sensor provider Egis Technology Inc (神盾) on Thursday reported that revenue last month rebounded to NT$296 million, an increase of 759 percent annually and 17 percent monthly. Second-quarter revenue declined 26 percent quarterly, Egis said, citing inventory digestion by a key customer. However, the second-quarter figure marked an annual increase of 247 percent, company data showed.
LIFE INSURANCE
Hybrid issuance to continue
The nation’s life insurers are expected to continue issuing hybrid capital securities in a bid to support their solvency, Fitch Ratings Inc said in a news release on Thursday. Since last year, life insurers have issued more than NT$160 billion of hybrid securities, with most of them being perpetual cumulative subordinated notes and callable 10 years from the date of issuance, Fitch said. However, some insurers are approaching the regulatory limit on hybrid issuance of 20 percent of available capital under the government’s risk-based capital regime, which will limit their further issuance, it 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