China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), Taiwan’s largest carrier, said it can be profitable with crude oil prices of as high as US$60 a barrel, helped by an increased number of flights to China.
“We’ll do our best to turn a profit,” chairman Philip Wei (魏幸雄) told shareholders yesterday at the company’s annual general meeting in Taipei. He didn’t give a timeframe for the goal.
The airline has increased flights to China as warmer cross-strait relations lead to an easing of travel restrictions. The extra traffic may help the carrier end a run of six unprofitable quarters caused by fuel-hedging losses and slowing cargo and passenger demand amid the global recession.
The airline doesn’t expect to report any hedging loss this quarter, Wei said. Still, swine flu has hurt travel demand with passenger numbers about 7 percent below expectations, he said.
Shareholders yesterday approved a plan to cancel 31 percent of the carrier’s outstanding shares to boost per share net worth. They also gave permission for the sale of as many as 1 billion new shares in a private placement within the next year.
The carrier hasn’t received any approaches from possible investors in China, Wei said. He didn’t say what the airline’s reaction to such an offer would be.
The carrier may also sell shares in a public offering in the second half of the year, the statement said, without giving any further details.
Crude oil for delivery next month rose as much as US$0.76, or 1.4 percent, to US$57.10 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at US$56.93 at 9:15am London time.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that Intel Corp would find itself in the same predicament as it did four years ago if its board does not come up with a core business strategy. Chang made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions about the ailing US chipmaker, once an archrival of TSMC, during a news conference in Taipei for the launch of the second volume of his autobiography. Intel unexpectedly announced the immediate retirement of former chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger last week, ending his nearly four-year tenure and ending his attempts to revive the
WORLD DOMINATION: TSMC’s lead over second-placed Samsung has grown as the latter faces increased Chinese competition and the end of clients’ product life cycles Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) retained the No. 1 title in the global pure-play wafer foundry business in the third quarter of this year, seeing its market share growing to 64.9 percent to leave South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the No. 2 supplier, further behind, Taipei-based TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report. TSMC posted US$23.53 billion in sales in the July-September period, up 13.0 percent from a quarter earlier, which boosted its market share to 64.9 percent, up from 62.3 percent in the second quarter, the report issued on Monday last week showed. TSMC benefited from the debut of flagship
A former ASML Holding NV employee is facing a lawsuit in the Netherlands over suspected theft of trade secrets, Dutch public broadcaster NOS said, in the latest breach of the maker of advanced chip-manufacturing equipment. The 43-year-old Russian engineer, who is suspected of stealing documents such as microchip manuals from ASML, is expected to appear at a court in Rotterdam today, NOS reported on Friday. He is accused of multiple violations of the sanctions legislation and has been given a 20-year entry ban by the Dutch government, the report said. The Dutch company makes machines needed to produce high-end chips that power
As South Korea descends into political chaos, its equity market risks falling further behind major tech rival Taiwan, which is basking in the glory of a global artificial intelligence (AI) boom. A near-30 percent surge in Taiwan’s stock benchmark this year, set to be the best since 2009, has already helped spur a historic divergence between Asia’s two tech-dominated markets. The nation’s market capitalization now exceeds South Korea’s by about US$950 billion as the world’s AI frontrunners from Nvidia Corp and Microsoft Corp to OpenAI all increasingly turn to Taiwanese firms for supply. Looking ahead to next year, while both export-oriented economies
RSS