Resins and composite materials manufacturer Swancor Holding Co Ltd (上緯) yesterday reported that net profits surged to NT$350.25 million (US$11.16 million) last quarter from NT$53.52 million in the second quarter last year, mainly due to divestment gains it made selling holdings in its renewable energy and offshore wind farm subsidiary.
The sale of a 95 percent stake in Swancor Renewable Energy Co (上緯新能源) to New York-based Stonepeak Oceanview Holdings Co helped boost the company’s earnings per share to NT$3.81 last quarter, compared with NT$0.6 a year earlier, the company said.
However, the company’s core business — fine chemicals — faced headwinds in the second quarter as shipments fell to 13,500 tonnes from 15,367 tonnes a year earlier.
Fine chemicals saw sales decline 12.89 percent year-on-year to NT$1.44 billion last quarter, but nonetheless contributed to 92.07 percent of the firm’s overall revenue of NT$1.56 billion.
“We were suffering from low demand in the Chinese market,” Swancor chairman Robert Tsai (蔡朝陽) told an earnings conference in Taipei.
The chemical market in China is under increasing pressure, as Chinese authorities are enforcing strict health and safety regulations following the explosion of a chemical plant in Jiangsu Province earlier this year, Tsai said.
“Our anti-corrosion products were heavily impacted,” he said.
Market demand might improve after China’s National Day holiday on Oct. 1, when Beijing is set to clarify its stance on health and safety regulations, he added.
The fine chemicals business is expected to see revenue grow 10 percent in the second half of the year, because of new orders from some major clients and specific demands from other clients, Tsai said.
“We aim to maintain gross margin at wbout 20 percent in the second half,” he said.
The company reported gross margin of 22.21 percent in the first half.
The company still has an interest in the nation’s wind power industry as it holds a 7.5 percent stake in Formosa I Wind Power Co (海洋風力發電) off the coast of Miaoli County, Taiwan’s first offshore wind farm, Tsai said.
“We are installing the seventh wind turbine right now,” Tsai said, adding that 20 wind turbines would be installed by the end of October.
Last month, Swancor signed a contract with MHI Vestas Offshore Wind A/S to provide materials such as epoxy resin and carbon fiber sheets, which are needed to produce wind turbine blades.
The company has received orders of about 60,000m from MHI Vestas for the second half of the year, Tsai said, adding that the company is looking to set up a second plant in Taichung and expects to enter mass production by the fourth quarter next year.
“We believe we can lead the market of raw materials for wind turbine blades,” Tsai 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