ELECTRONICS
Machvision revenue surges
Machvision Inc (牧德), a supplier of printed circuit board (PCB) inspection equipment, on Monday said revenue for the first two months of this year totaled NT$367 million (US$12.5 million), up 153.52 percent year-on-year, despite fewer working days and Lunar New Year holiday disruptions. The company attributed the increase to rising orders for automated optical inspection (AOI) equipment for PCB manufacturing and clients’ positive response to the company’s new AOI 4.0 products. The company said its board has approved a cash dividend of NT$10 per common share, representing a payout ratio of 92.08 percent based on last year’s earnings per share of NT$10.86. The company is to hold an annual general meeting on May 29 in Hsinchu, where shareholders are to vote on the dividend proposal.
OPTICS
BenQ Materials turns a profit
Polarizer manufacturer BenQ Materials Corp (明基材料) on Monday said it turned profitable last year, with net income hitting a three-year high of NT$525 million, thanks to asset disposal gains in the second half of last year. Revenue for last year contracted 12.7 percent to NT$11.12 billion from 2016, which the firm partly attributed to falling average selling prices of its polarizer products. The company has said it aims to increase the earnings contribution from its contact lens and biomedical materials businesses to account for half of its total profits in 2020, in a bid to cut reliance on the polarizer business. BenQ Materials said its board approved a cash dividend of NT$0.9, representing a payout ratio of 54.8 percent based on last year’s earnings per share of NT$1.64.
SOLAR POWER
Eversol to sell Taoyuan plant
Eversol Corp (旭晶), which specializes in manufacturing multi-crystalline silicon wafers, is to sell an idle manufacturing facility in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) to flexible PCB supplier Career Technology Co (嘉聯益), the two companies said yesterday in separate filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The sale of the land is estimated to total NT$1.57 billion and is to be carried out today. Eversol plans to use the proceeds from the sale to repay debts, its filing said.
ELECTRONICS
BizLink says sales to rise
Wire harness maker BizLink Holding Inc (貿聯) yesterday said that its sales are expected to rebound this month, following a lull during the Lunar New Year holiday. The company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange that sales last month dropped 15.1 percent to NT$1.38 billion, the lowest in the past nine months. Aggregate sales for the first two months of this year more than doubled annually to NT$3.01 billion, the filing said. The company attributed the gain to contributions from an electrical appliance assembly business it acquired from Germany-based Leoni AG.
BANKING
Two lenders add Garmin Pay
Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) and Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) yesterday added Garmin Pay to their list of supported mobile payment offerings, as local lenders seek to increase revenue and clients. The lenders were upbeat about the tie-in with Garmin, a leading brand in the fitness-oriented smartwatch market, as consumers grow more health conscious, the lenders said. The service can be used with credit cards, as well as with iPass smartcards, on the Garmin Vivoactive 3 smartwatch, the banks 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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts