ELECTRONICS
Largan sales up 4 percent
Smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) yesterday reported that unaudited sales last month rose 4 percent monthly and 17 percent annually to NT$4.51 billion (US$147.68 million). Sales in the first half of the year came to NT$21.17 billion, 4.28 percent lower than a year earlier, the company said. Largan is scheduled to hold its quarterly earnings conference on Thursday next week and investors are likely to focus on the company’s production yield rate and margin expansion as its top line grows.
CASINGS
Catcher upbeat on demand
Catcher Technology Co (可成科技), a metal casing supplier for Apple Inc, yesterday reported revenue of NT$7.2 billion for last month, up 3.6 percent month-on-month, but down 1.2 percent year-on-year. In the first six months, cumulative revenue totaled NT$41.16 billion, up 24.4 percent from a year earlier, the company said. Favorable industry trends of rising metal casing adoption and design complexity are expected to benefit Catcher due to its leading industry position, analysts said.
ELECTRONICS
Acquisition boosts Chilisin
Chilisin Electronics Corp (奇力新), the nation’s largest power inductor manufacturer, yesterday reported record sales of NT$1.71 billion for last month, up 71.65 percent year-on-year, which the company attributed to contribution from its newly acquired subsidiary Layers Scientific-Technics Co Ltd (美磊). In the first six months, cumulative sales totaled NT$7.38 billion, an annual increase of 26.53 percent, Chilisin said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
ELECTRONICS
Getac posts record revenue
Rugged PC vendor Getac Technology Corp (神基) yesterday posted record-high consolidated revenue of NT$2.07 billion for last month, up 14.21 percent year-on-year. In the first half of the year, revenue totaled NT$11.395 billion, up 11.44 percent from a year earlier. Sales in the second half are likely to maintain sequential growth driven by seasonal factors, analysts said.
HOSPITALITY
Humble House in shake-up
My Humble House Hospitality Management Consulting Co (寒舍餐旅) yesterday called a special board meeting and approved the appointment of managing director Wilhelm Tsai (蔡伯翰) as its chairman. Tsai served as acting chairman after Ellie Lai (賴英里) resigned on June 27 for personal reasons. Tsai, who joined the group in 2003, is to double as managing director, while Lai is to remain a board director, the company said.
FOREX
Reserves down US$153m
Foreign-exchange reserves amounted to US$457.12 billion as of the end of last month, a decline of US$153 million from the level in May, the central bank said yesterday. The depreciation of the euro and other currencies against the US dollar more than eroded asset management gains, the bank said.
BANKING
First Bank eyes Jakarta
First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) has obtained approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission to establish a representative office in Jakarta. The bank on Wednesday said it is awaiting approval from Indonesian authorities to set up its 17th office in Southeast Asia. The lender had a representative office in Jakarta before 2000, when it shuttered the office in light of the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS