ELECTRONICS
FIC to reduce capitalization
FIC Global Inc (大眾投控), a holding company engaged mainly in the manufacture of electronic devices, yesterday said its board has approved a plan to reduce its capitalization with the aim of offsetting accumulated losses. The Taipei-headquartered company is to cut its paid-in capital by 50 percent from NT$3.87 billion to NT$1.93 billion (US$132.5 million to US$66 million), it said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. At the end of last year, the company had accumulated net losses of NT$1.92 billion and 380.68 million issued shares. FIC shares shed 2.28 percent to close at NT$7.3 in Taipei trading yesterday before the announcement, underperforming the broader market.
BROKERAGES
Earnings decline 90 percent
Securities companies reported a month-on-month decline of more than 90 percent in earnings for last month as a result of the six-day Lunar New Year holiday, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. The exchange said the sharp drop in earnings also reflected caution among investors, who were concerned about volatility on Wall Street amid rising fears over more interest rate increases in the US. Securities firms reported NT$427.63 million in net profit last month, down 91.76 percent from January, when their earnings stood at NT$5.19 billion, the data showed. Due to the six-day holiday, there were only 15 trading sessions on the stock market last month, which lowered turnover by 39.75 percent from a month earlier, the data showed. In the first two months of the year, securities houses reported NT$5.84 billion in net profit, up 21.7 percent from the previous year largely on a 25 percent increase in turnover in January, when their earnings rose 45.44 percent year-on-year. Last year’s Lunar New Year holiday was in January.
HOME APPLIANCES
Record dividend announced
Taiwan Sakura Corp (台灣櫻花), which makes cooking appliances and water heaters, yesterday said its board has agreed to distribute a cash dividend of NT$2.6, a company filing with the stock exchange said. The proposed payout, if approved by shareholders on June 13 at the annual meeting in Taichung, would be the highest dividend in the company’s history, data showed. The company reported a net profit of NT$720.19 million for the whole of last year, a 2.7 percent year-on-year increase from NT$701.01 million, with sales edging up 0.7 percent to NT$5.64 billion from NT$5.6 billion. Earnings per share were NT$3.29 over the period, compared with NT$2.75 the previous year. Based on the company’s closing price of NT$37.7 yesterday, the dividend yield would be about 6.9 percent.
CIRCUIT BOARDS
Flexium to issue bonds
Flexible printed circuit board supplier Flexium Interconnect Inc (台郡科技) yesterday submitted a new fundraising program to the Securities and Futures Bureau. It plans to issue US$1.2 billion of corporate bonds for overseas investors, following in the steps of local rival Career Technology Co (嘉聯益). Flexium said it plans to invest NT$9.4 billion on new products. Career raised NT$2.92 billion by issuing 76.84 million new shares last week. Metal casing supplier Catcher Technology Co (可成科技) announced that it would invest NT$1.12 billion to acquire a 7.42 percent stake in Career as part of its vertical integration strategy. Flexium shares edged up 0.46 percent yesterday to close at NT$109.5 in Taipei trading.
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
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