INSURANCE
Chunghwa Post facing ban
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday imposed a six-month ban on selling life insurance products against 46 branches of Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政) based in Keelung after the regulator uncovered a serious infraction by a an employee. The commission found that the postal employee misappropriated NT$700 million (US$23.93 million) in insurance premiums that had been paid by more than 300 customers holding 887 policies. The the ban is expected to take effect next week, the commission said.
ELECTRONICS
Synnex’s net profit surges
Electronics distributor Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強國際) yesterday said its net profit surged 25 percent to NT$6.11 billion last year, compared with NT$4.88 billion in 2016. That translated into earnings per share of NT$3.67, up from NT$2.92 the previous year, a company statement said. Revenue climbed to a record-high NT$364.2 billion last year, up 6 percent from NT$342.7 billion in the previous year. The strongest growth came from the IC components segment with an annual growth rate of 12 percent. The company’s board of directors yesterday approved a cash dividend of NT$2.2 per common share.
TELECOMS
Dividend disappoints
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom, yesterday said its board of directors has approved a cash dividend of NT$4.79 per common share, the lowest payout since 2014. That represented a payout ratio of 95.6 percent based on the company’s earnings per share of NT$5.01 last year. It also implied a dividend yield of 4.6 percent based on the stock’s closing price of NT$109 yesterday.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to