SEMICONDUCTORS
Fall prompts buyback plan
Shares of United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) yesterday fell by 9.66 percent, prompting its board of directors to approve a share buyback scheme. UMC plans to repurchase up to 300 million shares on the open market from today to Jan. 5 at NT$7.55 to NT$20.8 per share, the company said. The repurchased shares would account for as much as a 2.41 percent stake in UMC, it said. UMC shares closed at NT$10.75 in Taipei trading yesterday, the lowest since September 2015, after the firm last week was indicated by the US Department of Justice for conspiring with Chinese state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co (晉華集成電路) to steal trade secrets from US chipmaker Micron Technology Inc.
LENS SUPPLIERS
Largan sales decline
Smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) yesterday reported that sales last month fell from September and said it would post a month-on-month decline in sales this month. The company last month during an earnings call had already indicated that demand looked weak in the near term, but said it expects positive trends and developments next year. Consolidated sales last month were NT$5.21 billion (US$169.3 million), down 6 percent monthly and 7 percent annually, Largan said. For the year to date, cumulative sales were NT$42.72 billion, flat from the same period last year, it said.
COMPONENTS
Slow season hits Yageo
Passive-components supplier Yageo Corp (國巨) yesterday reported a monthly decline in sales for last month, as the industry entered its traditional slow season while working days in China were reduced due to national holidays. The impact of the China-US trade spat had also caused weaker demand from customers in the Greater China region, the company said, adding that it expects higher inventories at distributors in the region. Consolidated sales dropped 38.4 percent month-on-month to NT$6.32 billion, but the figure rose 108.2 percent year-on-year. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months reached NT$67.25 billion, up 162.3 percent from a year earlier, it said.
SHIPPING
Wisdom profit increases
Wisdom Marine Group (慧洋), the nation’s largest dry bulk shipping company by fleet size, yesterday reported pretax profit of NT$196.04 million for last month, up 6.84 percent annually, with pretax earnings per share (EPS) of NT$0.32. Revenue grew 16.82 percent annually to NT$1.19 billion. The company attributed the growth to the depreciation of the New Taiwan dollar and the appreciation of Japanese yen, which boosted non-operating income, as well as the renewal of contracts for three vessels, bringing in higher rental income. Year to date, pretax profit totaled NT$1.32 billion, with pretax EPS of NT$2.15, while cumulative revenue rose 20.44 percent to NT$10.72 billion, it said.
CURRENCIES
Exchange reserves dip
Foreign-exchange reserves were US$460.18 billion as of the end of last month, a decrease of US$263 million from a month earlier, the central bank said yesterday. The bank said the decline came as returns from the management of reserve assets were offset by the depreciation of the euro and other reserve currencies against the US dollar. The market value of securities and NT dollar-based deposits held by foreign investors reached US$341.2 billion last month, equivalent to 74 percent of the overall foreign-exchange reserves, it said.
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