MACHINERY
Hitachi seeks offer extension
Japan’s Hitachi Group yesterday said that it is seeking to extend today’s deadline for its tender offer period to acquire elevator supplier Yungtay Engineering Co (永大) to April 22. More time is required, as the offer has yet to be cleared by the Investment Commission and the Fair Trade Commission, the company said. Hitachi said that it has not received reports of any competing bidders and, as the sole buyer in the deal, it intends to wholly own the Taiwanese company. An extraordinary meeting of the board of directors would take place on April 18 to protect shareholders’ interests, Yungtay independent director Chen Shih-yang (陳世洋) said.
MANUFACTURING
Sales in FPG units decline
The four major units of Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) yesterday reported that combined sales last month dropped 8.6 percent annually to NT$115.78 billion (US$3.75 billion). Combined sales in the first two months of the year also declined 8.8 percent annually to NT$253.9 billion. Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) led its peers last month, with sales rising 5 percent to NT$14.82 billion. Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) saw sales last month dip 8.1 percent to NT$27.57 billion, while Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) saw sales decline 10.6 percent to NT$52.43 billion. Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) had the weakest showing with sales dropping 12.7 percent to NT$20.96 billion.
AVIATION
AIDC chairman retires
Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC, 漢翔航空工業), the nation’s largest civilian and military aircraft manufacturer, yesterday announced that chairman Anson Liao (廖榮鑫) has tendered his resignation and would retire. Liao is to be succeeded by Air Force Deputy Commander Lieutenant General Hu Kai-hung (胡開宏). The change did not have the support of the AIDC workers’ union, which said that a government program to build locally developed trainer jets — which was launched under Liao’s watch — could be compromised. The union urged the government, a major stakeholder, to appoint a chairman from the company’s ranks. Liao took the helm at AIDC in 2015 and assembled an alliance of local aerospace suppliers to tackle major military and foreign commercial aircraft contracts.
ENERGY
Taipower ordered to pay GE
State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) on Tuesday said it would pay General Electric Co (GE) US$158 million in a dispute over payment for a reactor system for the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, following three years of international arbitration. Expressing regret at the International Chamber of Commerce’s ruling, which also stipulates that the payment must be made before June, Taipower said it would decide whether to appeal it. In April 2014, then-premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) announced that the two GE-built reactors at the plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) would be mothballed amid rising public concern about nuclear power following the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan on March 11, 2011. Since 2014, Taipower has stopped paying bills resulting from a contract under which GE was commissioned to build a nuclear reactor system and offer equipment and services for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, accusing GE of failure to meet the contract requirements. The plant was sealed in 2015.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by