Shinkong Synthetic Fibers Corp (新光合成纖維), which makes polyester fibers and plastics, said yesterday that its profit would rise by more than 10 percent this year on the back of income from selling assets and rising market demand.
The company booked NT$133.66 million (US$4.46 million) in income from selling a plot of land in Taipei in February. As a result, its profit last quarter doubled from NT$195.51 million, or NT$0.11 per share, a year ago to NT$596.99 million, or NT$0.35 per share, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
INSURANCE
Shinkong Synthetic is also expected to receive an insurance payment of about NT$300 million this year in relation to a factory that burned down in 2012, chairman Eric Wu (吳東昇) said yesterday after the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting.
Shinkong Synthetic plans to sell another property in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山區), if it can find a buyer willing to pay about NT$2.9 billion, Wu said.
Wu said market sentiment for its core businesses in the first half of this year is higher than it was a year ago, and that the factory utilization rate has been at 100 percent since March, higher than last year’s 79.03 percent.
CAPITAL INVESTMENTS
The company plans to spend NT$3 billion to double the capacity of its TacBright Optronics Corp (達輝光電) subsidiary, which makes triacetate cellulose film, with construction expected to be completed in the first quarter next year, Wu said.
The company expects to spend NT$3 billion to build a new production line for Shinkong Materials Technology Co (新科光電), another subsidiary which makes polyester films, Wu said, adding that the company plans to build another new production line for the subsidiary costing the same amount in the next two years.
Wu said Shinkong Synthetic is to double the capacity of a joint venture with Invista Inc this year, without disclosing the size of the investment.
DIVIDEND
Meanwhile, shareholders yesterday approved the company’s plan to distribute a NT$0.35 cash dividend this year, a payout ratio of 53.85 percent.
Last year, the company reported a profit of NT$1.15 billion, or earnings per share (EPS) of NT$0.65, up 22 percent from NT$665.93 million, or EPS of NT$0.38, the previous year, according to its filing.
RETIREMENT
Asked whether he plans to retire in the near future, Wu, who is 61, said he would consider retiring only after he raises the company’s share price above NT$20.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS