China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) yesterday said it expects stable growth this year as ongoing fleet upgrades help offset rising fuel costs.
The company, which has since 2016 taken delivery of 14 Airbus SE A350-900 aircraft to replace its older A340-300 jets, expects to benefit from the improved fuel efficiency and passenger load factors of the new aircraft to limit the effects on gross margin, CAL chairman Ho Nuan-hsuan (何煖軒) said at the company’s annual general meeting.
Ho said CAL is assessing Airbus A320neo and Boeing Co 737 MAX aircraft to replace its fleet of 737-800 planes.
CAL would gradually phase out its fleet of 737-800 aircraft, with the lost passenger capacity to be made up by leased aircraft, he said.
As A330-300 aircraft are crucial in long-haul flights, the company is still planning the aircraft’s retirement schedule, Ho added.
CAL would also continue to support the government’s New Southbound Policy and develop Taiwan as a destination for Muslim travelers from across Southeast Asia, Ho said.
However, the picture is less rosy for air cargo, with global demand growth forecast to slow from last year’s 9.3 percent to about 4.5 percent this year, Ho said, citing estimates by the International Air Transport Association.
In addition, as more airlines across the globe take delivery of newer wide-body aircraft with belly cargo holds, the increased capacity in the market could lead to oversupply, he said.
Shareholders yesterday approved a plan to distribute a cash dividend of NT$0.218 per share.
In related news, EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) on Friday last week said it would remain profitable as long as oil prices stay between US$70 and US$80 per barrel.
The company posted a net profit of NT$1.42 billion in the first quarter of this year, compared with a net loss a year earlier, despite Brent crude prices soaring to US$79 per barrel, it said at its shareholders’ meeting.
Passenger transport is expected to rise 2.6 percent annually this year, EVA said, adding that sales contribution from premium flights rose 15 percent annually during the first five months of the year.
EVA shareholders approved a plan to distribute a cash dividend of NT$0.7 per share.
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