INSURANCE
Premium income hits high
Non-life-insurance companies last year received NT$156.7 billion (US$5.35 billion) in gross premiums, up 7.4 percent from a year earlier, marking a new record high, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said on Friday last week. The increase was mainly due to growth in premium income from automobile insurance, which totaled NT$86 billion last year, up by 7.3 percent year-on-year, the agency said. Premium income from fire insurance grew 9.8 percent to NT$25.3 billion, it added.
E-COMMERCE
TPEX launches ‘e’ category
The Taipei Exchange on Friday said that six companies, including PChome Online Inc (網路家庭), Sunfun Info Co (尚凡資訊) and Gomaji (夠麻吉), would from March 12 be listed in a new e-commerce category, as part of its efforts to promote growth in the e-commerce sector. The firms are currently listed in the information technology and cultural and creative industry categories. Companies that made at least half of their annual revenue from online sales over the past two years, or 80 percent over the past year, are eligible to be listed in the category, the exchange said.
BIOCHEMICALS
SciVision sales grow 174%
SciVision Biotech Inc (科妍生技), which produces hyaluronic acid for use in plastic surgery and treatment of degenerative joint diseases, has seen sales hit fresh highs for three months in a row. The company on Friday in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange reported that revenue last month increased 174 percent year-on-year to NT$36.16 million, while its combined revenue in the first two months grew 133.55 percent from the same period last year to NT$71.78 million.
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