The nation’s biggest solar cell maker, Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), expects to swing back to profit this quarter as demand recovers after some countries, such as the US and Japan, resumed subsidies for solar installations amid a recovering economy, a company executive said yesterday.
The strong rebound in the fourth quarter may help turn 2009 into a profitable year, Motech chief executive officer Norman Shen (沈楨林) told an investor conference.
“We believe Motech’s operation will improve significantly from next quarter after hitting the bottom in the second quarter,” Shen said. “The fourth quarter will be the best quarter this year in terms of sales and gross margin .... Factory utilization will be full.”
Japan, the US and European countries such as Germany and Italy would be the main growth areas as their governments recently decided to subsidize solar installations again, Shen said.
Motech accumulated losses of NT$389 million (US$11.95 million) in the first nine months of the year as prices plunged more than 60 percent year-on-year to about US$1.30 per watt because of overcapacity and dwindling demand.
Prices are forecast to stabilize over the next five quarters, Shen said.
Shen expects the recovery to carry over into next year and plans to boost production capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt next year, from 600 megawatts this year to cope with rising demand. That would mean an aggressive increase in capital spending from this year’s NT$3 billion.
Motech plans to raise funds for the expansion in the first half of next year, Shen said.
Local rival E-Tone Solar Tech Co Ltd (益通光能) shared Motech’s optimisim.
“I don’t see major negative factors ahead ... I believe drastic price declines will spur demand,” E-Tone financial executive Lo Lai-hwang (羅來煌) said.
Lo said US demand looked strong as the administration of US President Barack Obama pushed hard for a green energy policy.
E-Tone plans to spend NT$1.5 billion to build new two new production lines next year, which will boost capacity by about 37 percent to 440 megawatts next year. Its estimated capital spending for this year is NT$1.62 billion.
The company expects quarterly earnings to grow further this quarter after returning to the black in the third quarter, during which it earned NT$85.38 million.
On a full-year basis, however, it expects to remain in the red, with cumulative losses in the first nine months reaching NT$564 million.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS