■ UMC makes gains
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world's second-largest contract chipmaker by revenue, said yesterday its revenue for last month rose to NT$8.46 billion (US$269.07 million), up 32.9 percent from the same month last year. The company posted revenue of NT$6.37 billion for April last year. UMC supplies semiconductor chips to several of the biggest companies in the global high-tech sector for use in a variety of products, including desktop computers, notebooks, mobile phones and digital cameras. For the four months ended April 30, UMC reported revenue of NT$32.85 billion (US$1.04 billion), 23.2 percent higher than the NT$26.65 billion in the same period last year, according to a statement on its Web site. UMC's revenue for last month was also up compared to the NT$8.455 billion posted for March.
■ Tsann Kuen trading to resume
Shares of Tsann Kuen Group (燦坤實業) will resume normal trading on the local bourse starting tomorrow, after the nation's largest home appliance and consumer electronics retailer chain passed the auditing of its financial report for last year, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said yesterday. Tsann Kuen's shares were restricted to cash transactions only since last Friday as its certified public accountant (CPA) issued a "qualified opinion" in its annual audit report for last year. Tsann Kuen said it had obtained an "unqualified opinion" for the report on Monday after its CPA in China completed auditing its results. Shares of Tsann Kuen rebounded by the 7 percent daily limit to close at NT$44.6 (US$1.42) yesterday.
■ Pre-tax revenues up
The nation's listed companies grew richer, as the combined first-quarter pre-tax income of the firms publicly traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange increased by NT$63.3 billion (US$2 billion), or 31.57 percent, from a year ago, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday. Companies traded on the GRETAI Securities Market saw their pre-tax income increase by NT$9.4 billion, or 117.50 percent, over the same period, the statistics showed. Five of the nation's 1,206 listed companies failed to report their financial results for last year and the first quarter of this year by the deadline, including power transformer maker Potrans Electrical Corp (鴻運電子) and telecom software system provider Dinttap International Corp (鼎太國際), the commission said. These companies will be fined between NT$240,000 and NT$2.4 million and face a new deadline, the commission said. Trading of these companies' shares will also be suspended until their financial reports are completed, it added.
■ Dopod backs brand
Dopod International Corp (多普達), which sells mobile phones made by High Tech Computer Corp (宏達電), said late on Monday that it has hired former BenQ Corp (明基) executive Scott Huang (黃思齊) as its new marketing communication director in a bid to boost the company's brand business in the Asia-Pacific market. opod obtained Beijing's approval early this year to sell mobile phones in China. efore joining BenQ, Huang served in high-ranking positions at Nokia Ojy's local branch and local digital camera brand Him Technology Inc (華研).
■ NT dollar declines
The NT dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.117 to close at NT$31.497. total of US$1.03 billion changed hands during the day's trading.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) market value closed above US$1 trillion for the first time in Taipei last week, with a raised sales forecast driven by robust artificial intelligence (AI) demand. TSMC saw its Taiwanese shares climb to a record high on Friday, a near 50 percent rise from an April low. That has made it the first Asian stock worth more than US$1 trillion, since PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) briefly reached the milestone in 2007. As investors turned calm after their aggressive buying on Friday, amid optimism over the chipmaker’s business outlook, TSMC lost 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,150
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