Firms consider hiring: poll
About 43 percent of Taiwanese employers are thinking of hiring new staff in the fourth quarter amid a recovering economy around the world, the ManpowerGroup said yesterday, citing a recent survey.
The US-based human resources firm said the poll also showed that 53 percent of employers do not plan to either add or cut jobs in the last three months of the year, while 2 percent are considering downsizing, according to the firm’s Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which polled a total of 1,108 local employers.
On Monday, Morgan Stanley raised its growth forecast for Taiwan from 3.4 percent to 3.7 percent this year, compared with the government’s 3.41 percent growth forecast.
Panion drug gets US approval
Panion & BF Biotech Inc (寶齡富錦) yesterday said its US partner, Keryx Biopharmaceuticals Inc, had received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell its new drug Nephoxil, which is used to treat high serum-phosphate levels resulting from chronic kidney disease, in the US on Friday.
The Taiwanese producer of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and consumer healthcare products said in a statement that it would receive a milestone payment from Keryx within 120 days. Panion & BF plans to use 33.4 percent of the amount as payments to the drug’s inventor, the company said.
However, the company’s share price dropped 2.08 percent to NT$396.66 yesterday, underperforming the over-the-counter benchmark index, which was up 0.16 percent, as Keryx shares had declined by 16 percent over the previous two days to close at US$15.11 on Monday in New York.
Intel launches new processors
Intel Corp launched a new range of Xeon processors yesterday that are aimed at improving performance and power efficiency at data centers in Taiwan and across the globe.
The Intel Xeon E5-2600 and E5-1600 v3 product lines will be used in servers, workstations, storage and networking infrastructure to power workloads such as data analytics, high-performance computing, telecommunications, cloud-based services and back-end processing for Internet of Things technology, according to Intel.
Apple ‘stops smartwatch’
Apple Inc has asked suppliers to halt the production of its first smartwatch due to unknown reasons, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday ahead of a long-awaited press conference by Apple in California.
Apple originally told its suppliers to begin shipping iWatch components to assemblers late in the third quarter, but the plan was called off by the US company and shipping would not resume until the fourth quarter or the first quarter of next year, the newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources in the local supply chain.
Asustek’s revenue rises
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) yesterday said that its consolidated revenue for last month was NT$42.16 billion, an increase of 4.91 percent from a month earlier and 3.1 percent from the same time last year, thanks to increases in both notebook computer and handset shipments.
Accumulated figures of its revenue for the period from January to last month reached NT$297.88 billion, an increase of 2.56 percent year-on-year, the world’s No. 5 PC brand said.
As for the company’s “Asus brand” revenue for last month, the figure hit the highest level this year at NT$38.72 billion, up 5.28 percent from July and also up 5.29 percent from a year earlier.
ASE reports higher sales
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s largest chip packager and tester, yesterday said consolidated sales last month rose 4.39 percent month-on-month and 11.19 percent year-on-year to NT$20.93 billion, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
With combined sales of NT$40.98 billion for the past two months, the company is on track to achieve Capital Securities Corp’s (群益證券) revenue forecast of NT$67.25 billion for this quarter. From January through last month, total revenue climbed 14.04 percent to NT$154.4 billion from a year ago.
Lite-On says business growing
Optoelectronic parts maker Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) yesterday reported consolidated revenue of NT$19.19 billion for last month, down 8 percent month-on-month, but up 1 percent year-on-year.
The company’s cumulative consolidated revenue from January to last month reached NT$150.23 billion, up 13 percent year-on-year, as all core businesses showed steady growth, resulting from stable end-market demand, the company said in a statement.
Synnex posts higher revenue
Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強電子), Asia’s largest distributor of information technology products and electronics components, yesterday posted revenue of NT$28.7 billion for last month, a 7 percent increase from NT$26.9 billion a year earlier.
Sales of semiconductor components increased most, by 26 percent from a year ago, followed by a 3 percent rise in telecoms items and 1 percent growth each in consumer electronics and information technology goods, the company said in a statement.
From January through last month, cumulative revenue increased 3 percent to NT$212.5 billion from the same period last year, the company said.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
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