Local solar-cell maker Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光能源) is stepping up capacity expansion efforts this year to better cope with voracious demand for its products amid rising solar panel installation in Europe and Asia, company executives said yesterday.
The Hsinchu-based company aimed to more than double its annual capacity to 1.8 gigawatts by the end of this year, from 820 megawatts last year. Originally, Neo Solar planned to expand capacity to 1.3 gigawatts.
“Neo Solar will operate its plants at full capacity again this year,” company chairman Quincy Lin (林坤禧) told a media briefing yesterday.
Orders from customers have exceeded capacity by 10 percent based on signed supply contracts, Neo Solar said.
“Global effective capacity is likely to be less than demand this year. What’s more, there is the probability of short supply,” Lin said.
Solar panel installation is expected to grow 20 percent to around 18 gigawatts this year, up from 15 gigawatts last year as demand rises primarily in Germany — which consumed half of the world’s solar panels last year — and other markets such as Italy, Japan and India, Neo Solar president Sam Hong (洪傳獻) said.
Solar panel installation is likely to spike before the German government begins to cut subsidies in the third quarter, supporting a slight rebound in solar-cell prices in the first half of the year, Hong said.
He said prices started to bounce back last month after bad weather and uncertainty over new green energy subsidies dampened solar panel installation in Europe, causing a decline in solar-cell prices since December.
Local rival Motech Industries Inc (茂迪) yesterday said revenues grew 24.43 percent to NT$3.86 billion (US$131 million) last month from NT$3.1 billion in January. Neo Solar said last week that last month’s revenues surged to a new record high of NT$2.45 billion.
To help fund the capacity expansion, Neo Solar planned to raise between US$250 million and US$300 million initially by selling as many as 120 million common shares in the form of global depositary receipts next quarter.
The company budgeted NT$10 billion for capital spending this year.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
RSS