Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) yesterday took to social media to take back the narrative on the company’s track record of keeping its investment promises.
Gou on Facebook lashed out at a report by the Chinese-language Business Today (今周刊) weekly that revisited unrealized Hon Hai investment plans dating back a decade.
The article followed Hon Hai’s pullout from plans to build an LCD plant in Wisconsin that came with one of the largest corporate welfare package in US history on promises that the company would bring in billions of US dolllars of investments and create millions of jobs.
In light of the rise of social media, the company would begin to communicate its progress to the public directly to prevent the spread of misinformation about its investment projects, Gou said.
The company has always striven to meet its commitments and uphold its reputation, but the rollout of its global strategy has been hampered by misconstrued media reports based on piecemeal information, he said.
“All we need is truth, not news,” he added.
The Wisconsin project has been put on the back burner while the state transitions to a new Democratic administration, Gou said.
The project was left in limbo before it got off the ground, Gou said, adding that such setbacks from political shifts are common in the US, as well as Taiwan.
Regarding a promise by the company during former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) term that it would pour NT$80 billion (US$2.59 billion at the current exchange rate) into the Kaohsiung Software Technology Park, of which the magazine said only NT$1.9 billion was realized, Gou said that anyone with basic knowledge of the technology sector would know that the full amount would have been excessive for software development.
The company’s expansion plans in India’s Maharashtra State have been stalled for three years due to difficulties securing land, Gou said, adding that he expects to report progress in the near future.
The company in 2014 reached an agreement with Indonesian President Joko Widodo stipulating that planned factory construction in the country would begin as soon as land is secured, Gou said.
Gou also rejected a claim by Business Today that Hon Hai has fallen short on promises to invest US$12 billion to build a manufacturing facility in in Brazil and that the facility was shuttered in 2015.
The company never committed to the US$12 billion cited in the report, he said, adding that building the iPhone and iPad assembly plant in Brazil, which is still producing phones, cost far less than that.
However, Gou did not respond to the report’s coverage on Hon Hai’s activities in Vietnam.
The magazine said that Hon Hai adjusted its expansion plans in Vietnam after some of its establishment permits were revoked in 2015, as it had failed to fully meet its pledges seven years after gaining government approvals.
Time would tell if Hon Hai would deliver on its promise to build an iPhone plant in Vietnam, which it made in December last year, the report said.
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS