Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, was honored on Friday for excellence in promoting a balance between work and life, enabling employees to be as good at making babies as they were at manufacturing chips last year.
TSMC said in a statement that it has won the first “Work-Life Balance Award” presented by the ministry in recognition of the company’s performance in three areas: employee initiative and achievements, care and support for employee families, and the health and safety of its employees.
In the statement, TSMC senior vice president Lora Ho (何麗梅) said the award recognized the company’s pledge to help each one of its employees enjoy a healthy, balanced and happy life, which has created a positive environment for families to have children.
A total of 2,360 babies were born to TSMC employees last year, accounting for 1.2 percent of the total number of children born in the nation during the year, she said.
The number of births to the firm’s employees is relatively high in a country that had one of the lowest fertility rates in the world last year, at 1.07 births per woman.
“We believe it is because our colleagues feel good about the company and have faith in its prospects and feel they can have a family and give birth with the support of the company’s welfare policies and measures,” Ho said.
TSMC had a worldwide workforce of 40,483 people as of Dec. 31 last year, which included 4,600 workers employed during the year, the company said.
The semiconductor giant also set records last year for consolidated revenue of NT$597.02 billion (US$19.9 billion) and net income of NT$188.15 billion, according to TSMC’s financial statements.
Its earnings per share were NT$7.26, the statements said.
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
MARKET SHIFTS: Exports to the US soared more than 120 percent to almost one quarter, while ASEAN has steadily increased to 18.5 percent on rising tech sales The proportion of Taiwan’s exports directed to China, including Hong Kong, declined by more than 12 percentage points last year compared with its peak in 2020, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday last week. The decrease reflects the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, driven by escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington. Data compiled by the ministry showed China and Hong Kong accounted for 31.7 percent of Taiwan’s total outbound sales last year, a drop of 12.2 percentage points from a high of 43.9 percent in 2020. In addition to increasing trade conflicts between China and the US, the ministry said
RSS