Shares of Swancor Holding Co ( 上緯) yesterday continued to plunge after the company missed expectations that it would secure more contracts for offshore wind farms along the nation’s west coast.
The stock dropped by the maximum daily limit of 10 percent for the second straight day, closing at NT$122.50 in Taipei trading.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs on Monday approved 10 offshore wind farm projects, with a total capacity of 3.836 gigawatts (GW), by seven developers.
While Swancor obtained approval for its Formosa II (海能風電) project, whose two Miaoli County-based wind farms are expected to become operational by 2020 with an installed capacity of 378 megawatts (MW), it did not get the nod for its Formosa III (海鼎風電), a project in Changhua County that was expected to have a capacity of 2000MW by 2025.
Despite the discouraging results, Swancor said it would participate in an auction next month by the ministry to select developers to provide 1.66GW capacity by 2025.
Overall, the government plans to build offshore wind farms with a total capacity of 5.5GW by 2025.
The Nantou County-based company, which began its energy business in 2012, has successfully set up the nation’s first offshore wind farm, Formosa I (海洋風電), through an alliance with Australia’s Macquarie Capital Ltd and Denmark’s energy company Orsted.
Once completed by the end of next year, the Miaoli-based wind farm’s total capacity would reach 128MW, Swancor said.
Swancor, whose core business includes turbine resin manufacturing, posted a first-quarter net loss of NT$42.08 million (US$1.41 million), compared with a net profit of NT$1.22 million a year earlier. Losses per share were NT$0.47.
First-quarter revenue grew 22.62 percent to NT$1.15 billion, but gross margin fell to 12.61 percent from 18.56 percent.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day