ENTERTAINMENT
VHQ buys into TV dramas
Singapore-based VHQ Media Holdings Ltd (威馳克媒體) yesterday said it has purchased a 70 percent stake in Beijing Jupiter Cultural Media Inc (木星時代文化傳媒), a deal that is likely contribute to its revenue and earnings this quarter. VHQ, which trades on the Taipei Exchange, said it expects that the extension into TV dramas through the 173.6 million yuan (US$25.1 million) deal would help it leverage its strengths in movie production, TV commercial visual design, special effects, post-production and 3D animation. VHQ said it remains optimistic for this year, as orderbook visibility stretches until next year.
SEMICONDUCTORS
PDC shares up on earnings
Prosperity Dielectrics Co Ltd (PDC, 信昌電子陶瓷) shares yesterday rose 9.91 percent after it reported that net profit increased 322 percent annually in August. The Taoyuan-based company, which supplies chip capacitors, chip resistors, ceramic dielectric powder, semiconductor ceramics and silver paste, said that net profit reached NT$190 million (US$6.15 million) in August, with earnings per share (EPS) of NT$1.11, compared with NT$0.26 in the same month last year. Cumulative net profit totaled NT$372 million for July and August, up 389 percent year-on-year, with EPS of NT$2.16, PDC said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
ELECTRONICS
Parade approves buyback
Parade Technologies Ltd (譜瑞), which specializes in designing and selling high-speed signal transmission interfaces and display chips, yesterday said its board of directors has approved a share buyback scheme and would transfer the repurchased shares to its employees. The company plans to repurchase 500,000 shares on the open market from yesterday to Dec. 11 at NT$282.5 to NT$677 per share, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The repurchased shares would account for 0.63 percent of its total issuance, Parade said. The company’s shares yesterday closed up 8.92 percent at NT$403 in Taipei trading. They have declined 31.58 percent this year. The firm reported sales of NT$7.25 billion in first nine months, down 5.8 percent year-on-year.
ELECTRONICS
Ichia Q3 earnings strong
Handset keypad maker Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉科技) on Thursday released unaudited operating results for last quarter showing pretax profit of NT$93 million, the highest for the period in four years. Shipments, product prices, yield rates and operating efficiency improved last quarter from the second quarter, the company said. From January through last month, cumulative pretax profit totaled NT$59 million, the company said in a statement. In the first nine months, consolidated revenue grew 1.68 percent annually to NT$5.34 billion, with gross margin of 6 percent and operating losses of NT$7 million, Ichia said.
ENERGY
Tatung OKs solar plant
Home appliance supplier Tatung Co (大同) on Thursday said its board of directors voted to invest in a 133 megawatt (MW) solar power plant in Tainan’s Cigu District (七股), in addition to a 120MW solar plant in the area that the board approved earlier. Overall, Tatung said it plans to install 253MW of solar capacity in Tainan, as it strives to enhance its market share in solar power plants and assure long-term revenue and profit stability, the company said in a statement. Tatung has been aggressively inviting large-scale financial investors to participate in the investment, it added.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
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