GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), a leading silicon wafer supplier, is repatriating US$350 million for local investments, taking advantage of a preferential tax status created by a newly passed law that encourages local firms to repatriate retained earnings.
GlobalWafers said in a statement on Tuesday that the plan for fund repatriation has been approved by its board of directors and is scheduled to be completed in the first half of next year.
GlobalWafers is just one of the major local enterprises with a worldwide production network that have responded to government incentives to invest back home to boost local industrial development and the economy.
The Act on the Use of and Taxation on Inward Remittances of Overseas Funds (境外資金匯回管理運用及課稅條例), which took effect on Aug. 15, allows retained earnings to return and be taxed at a lower preferential rate rather than at the standard corporate income rate.
Late last month, iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract electronics maker, announced that it has remitted NT$7 billion (US$230.2 million) to Taiwan from overseas under the law to increase its stake in subsidiary Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信).
GlobalWafers said that it would use the funds to upgrade high-end processes, while speeding up the pace at which it develops silicon wafers for 5G devices, power electronics and electric vehicles.
GlobalWafers aims to expand an existing research-and-development center and to assign more funds to renewable energy development, the company said, adding that it expects to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from wafer manufacturing.
In October, the Industrial Development Bureau certified GlobalWafers as a “green factory,” the company said.
The company expects investment in renewable energy to help it fulfill its responsibilities as a corporation.
GlobalWafers is the third-largest silicon wafer manufacturer in the world since acquiring Singapore-based Sun Edison Semiconductor Ltd for US$683 million in late 2016.
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