Shares of Wistron Information Technology & Services Corp (WITSC, 緯創軟體), which provides consulting and information technology (IT) outsourcing services to companies including IBM Corp and Apple Inc, closed up 53.13 percent on its local market debut yesterday.
Company shares opened at NT$32 and ended at NT$49 on the first trading day on the GRETAI Securities Market (GTSM, 櫃檯買賣中心).
WITSC chief executive officer Ching Hsiao (蕭清志) said at a GTSM ceremony to mark the share debut that he expects sales to achieve double-digit growth this year.
“The US and Chinese markets will become WITSC’s largest sales drivers this year on huge demand for big data-analyzing and cloud computing services there,” he said.
The company opened its first US office earlier this month and will send more staff to the US to explore that market, he added.
China and Japan are the company’s two largest markets, each accounting for about 30 percent of WITSC’s total sales last year, while the US contributed less than 5 percent of overall sales. Sales in Taiwan made up 20 percent last year’s total, WITSC said.
Cumulative sales during the first 11 months of last year were NT$1.99 billion, a 2.53 percent increase from the NT$1.94 billion recorded during the same period a year ago. Net profit fell 25.78 percent to NT$35.37 million, or earnings per share of NT$0.95, during the first three quarters of last year from NT$46.92 million, NT$1.28 per share, during the same period of 2012, the company said.
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China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
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