SEMICONDUCTORS
Faraday results disappoint
Integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原科技) yesterday reported that fourth-quarter sales and earnings were below market expectations, reflecting the effects of clients’ inventory adjustments. Faraday’s fourth-quarter net income fell 66.4 percent from the previous quarter to NT$49 million (US$1.63 million), or earnings per share of NT$0.2, while sales fell by 11.9 percent to NT$1.4 billion, a company financial statement showed. Aided by higher revenue from its high-margin silicon intellectual property rights and non-recurring engineering segments, Faraday’s overall revenue for last year increased 8.2 percent annually to NT$5.31 billion, while net income rose 32.1 percent to NT$3.48 billion, or earnings per share of NT$1.4, it said.
TECHNOLOGY
US firm eyes high Q1 sales
Applied Materials Inc on Wednesday released a bullish sales forecast for this quarter, suggesting that its customers are once again spending on their fabs. The company’s fiscal second-quarter sales would be US$4.34 billion, plus or minus US$200 million, and adjusted earnings would be between US$0.98 and US$1.10 a share for the period ending in April, the company said in a statement. The US company is the largest maker of machinery used by manufacturers of semiconductors, with Samsung Electronics Co, Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) among its customers.
TRANSPORTATION
GrabWheels takes EV partner
GrabWheels, the new mobility arm of ride-hailing firm Grab, yesterday said that it has secured US$30 million in fresh funding from Taiwanese venture capital fund KYMCO Capital (金庫資本), as part of a strategic partnership to invest in and develop two-wheeler electric-vehicle (EV) solutions to accelerate the adoption of EVs in Southeast Asia. The fund is under Taiwanese scooter maker Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽工業), which sells its scooters under the KYMCO brand. The partnership would enable the firms to jointly explore developing and deploying two-wheel EVs, specifically KYMCO’s Ionex electric bikes, as well as the Ionex EV charging platform in Southeast Asian cities, a press release said. The US$30 million capital injection is part of GrabWheels’ ongoing Series A round.
AIRLINES
CAL delays Cebu flights
China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) yesterday announced that it is postponing the launch of its Taoyuan-Cebu flights from March 29 to June 12 due to Manila’s announcement on Monday that it is temporarily banning Taiwanese visitors from the Philippines in a bid to contain COVID-19. CAL’s announcement came after Starlux Airlines Co’s (星宇航空) decision on Wednesday to delay the launch of its Taoyuan-Cebu route until July 1.
RETAIL
Breeze Group to cut jobs
Upscale mall operator Breeze Group (微風集團) on Wednesday confirmed that it plans to reduce its workforce, but declined to say whether media reports of a 30 percent cut are accurate. The planned reduction is a routine internal adjustment, Breeze said, adding that it would continue to hire professionals to help the firm expand. Breeze opened its 10th Taipei mall in January 2018 — the Breeze Nan Shan (微風南山) in the city’s Xinyi District (信義) — and plans to open another one in Nangang District (南港), it said. Taipei Department of Labor official Liu Chia-hung (劉家鴻) said his agency had not yet received a notice from Breeze about layoffs or any complaints from the group’s employees.
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
France cannot afford to ignore the third credit-rating reduction in less than a year, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure said. “Three agencies have downgraded us and we can’t ignore this cloud,” he told Franceinfo on Saturday, speaking just hours after S&P lowered his country’s credit rating to “A+” from “AA-” in an unscheduled move. “Fundamentally, it’s an additional cloud to a weather forecast that was already pretty gray. It’s a call for lucidity and responsibility,” he said, adding that this is “a call to be serious.” The credit assessor’s move means France has lost its double-A rating at two of the
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
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