EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) is upbeat about the first quarter, expecting ridership to grow and fuel prices to remain steady, while the US-China trade dispute might not affect the freight business, EVA president Clay Sun (孫嘉明) said on Thursday.
The carrier expects higher ridership to boost revenue and profits, with ridership on Northeast Asian routes likely to grow 10 percent year-on-year after six Boeing 787 aircraft were introduced on routes to Japan’s Nagoya, Matsuyama and Aomori, as well as some of its existing routes between Taiwan and Japan, Sun said.
Japan is still the top travel choice for Taiwanese, Sun added.
Fuel prices, which fell in the fourth quarter of last year, are expected to remain steady in the first quarter, Sun said.
EVA used 15.66 million barrels of oil in 2017, up 6 percent year-on-year. Sun did not reveal how much oil the carrier consumed last year.
The carrier is not worried about the impact on its freight volume amid the US-China trade spat, Sun said, adding that even if freight from China and the US drops, rising volumes from other Southeast Asian nations, such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia, would offset the impact.
EVA reported revenue of NT$14.73 billion (US$479.3 million) in November, up 11.03 percent year-on-year, with cumulative revenue of NT$164.34 billion for the January-to-November period, up 10.59 percent year-on-year, company data showed.
Net profit was NT$2.64 billion in the third quarter of last year, down 41.67 percent year-on-year, but cumulative net profit totaled NT$5.98 billion for the first three quarters, or earnings per share of NT$1.36, up 11.45 percent year-on-year, data showed.
Revenue in the fourth quarter could rise at a double-digit percentage year-on-year, but net profit might not outperform the third quarter due to year-end bonuses, Sun 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