AVIATION
Tigerair inks codeshare deal
Budget carriers Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航) and T’way Air of South Korea have entered into a codeshare agreement to provide improved services, the first time that Tigerair Taiwan has concluded such a deal with a foreign carrier. In the initial stage, the two airlines are to offer more options through codeshare flights, starting with their Taoyuan-Daegu and Taoyuan-Busan routes, with passengers having the option of booking their flight on the Web site of either airline, Tigerair Taiwan said. The agreement, which is effective from March 25 to Oct. 27, involves nine round-trip codeshare flights per week between Taoyuan and Daegu — seven runs by T’way Air and two by Tigerair Taiwan, Tigerair Taiwan said.
CHIPMAKERS
TSMC shares rise 2.35%
Shares of TSMC, the most heavily weighted stock in the local market, yesterday rose 2.35 percent to close at NT$261.50, with 43.29 million shares changing hands on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. TSMC’s market value surged to NT$6.78 trillion (US$230.4 billion), its highest ever, after reaching NT$6.63 trillion on Friday. Since the beginning of the year, TSMC shares have gained almost 14 percent on the main board. Meanwhile, the company is on Friday scheduled to break ground on a new foundry to produce the advanced 5-nanometer (nm) wafers at the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學工業園). The company is developing 7nm, 5nm and 3nm processes in a bid to maintain its lead in the global semiconductor market.
COMPUTERS
Acer shares hit daily record
Shares of Acer Inc (宏碁) climbed by 10 percent, a daily record, to close at NT$32.2 in Taipei trading yesterday — the company’s highest stock price since June 22, 2012. A total of 191.62 million shares of Acer were traded during the session, data from the stock exchange showed. Acer’s stock price has surged 29.33 percent in the past month, the data showed. The company’s combined net profit reached NT$1.75 billion in the first three quarters of last year, more than doubling from NT$833.31 million in the same period a year earlier, company data showed. Acer’s cumulative revenue rose 1.98 percent to NT$237.33 billion last year, it said in a filing with the stock exchange.
LABOR
Q1 recruiting push forecast
A large number of businesses have plans to recruit during the first quarter of this year, a Ministry of Labor survey released on Thursday last week showed. The survey, conducted by TaiwanJobs (台灣就業通), an online recruitment platform established by the ministry’s Workforce Development Agency, showed that 60.6 percent of local firms surveyed have plans to recruit during the first quarter, while 24.62 percent are unsure and 14.78 percent do not have openings. A total of 672 companies indicated that they are looking to hire this quarter.
TECHNOLOGY
GUC sees 55% annual growth
Global Unichip Corp (GUC, 創意電子), which designs application-specific integrated circuits, yesterday reported net profit of NT$854.81 million for last year, or earnings per share of NT$6.38, benefitting from strong demand for high-performance chips, such as those used in cryptocurrency mining. The figure represented 55 percent growth year-on-year from the company’s NT$551 million net profit in 2016. GUC shares rallied 9.95 percent to NT$337 in Taipei trading, a 10-year high.
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