Gas prices might fall further
Domestic gasoline prices could fall by between NT$0.4 and NT$0.6 (US$0.0126 and US$0.0189) per liter next week from this week to reflect falling global crude oil prices, local media reported yesterday.
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油) is expected to announce domestic fuel prices for next week tomorrow.
Reports by Chinese-language Apple Daily and Economic Daily News said that if international crude prices continued to fall later yesterday, domestic fuel prices could drop to a more than five-year low next week.
Compal might buy Lenovo stock
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) might acquire an unspecified number of shares in Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) to help secure its manufacturing partnership with the world’s largest PC brand, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing unnamed institutional investors.
Buying the Lenovo shares would reduce the concerns investors have about the outlook for Compal’s notebook computer manufacturing business, the paper said.
The two companies set up a joint venture, Lienpal Ltd (聯寶), in 2011 in Hefei in Anhui Province, China, with Lenovo holding a 51 percent stake in the venture and Compal taking the remainder.
Last month, Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) said in an interview with the Apple Daily newspaper that Lenovo is planning to buy back the 49 percent stake in Lienpal held by Compal to avoid earnings dilution.
Hycon applies to list on GTSM
Hycon Technology Corp (紘康科技), a developer of high-precision and low-drift analog signal-related processing integrated circuits, has applied with GRETAI Securities Market (GTSM) to list its shares on the nation’s over-the-counter board.
The chipmaker was established in 2007 in Taipei, with registered capital of NT$244 million. Its main products involve developing IC solutions for battery management, instrumentation and meters, as well as industrial control fields.
Hycon reported cumulative sales of NT$430 million in the first 11 months of last year, up 15.06 percent year-on-year. Net profit was NT$33.24 million in the first three quarters of last year, or NT$1.4 per share, according to the company’s listing prospectus.
Total outstanding loans rise
Total outstanding loans extended by the nation’s banks grew NT$22.9 billion month-on-month to reach NT$2.479 trillion in November last year, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said in a statement on Tuesday.
Non-performing loans (NPL) across the domestic banking sector totaled NT$70.5 billion in November, down from the NT$73.9 billion recorded in October.
The nation’s 39 domestic banks’ NPL ratio improved by 0.02 percent month-on-month to 0.28 percent, while their coverage ratios for allowances for NPLs reached 442.07 percent in November, compared with 418.58 percent in October, the commission said.
V Air hiring flight attendants
V Air (威航), a low-cost carrier that is part of the TransAsia Airways Group (復興航空集團), launched a second recruitment drive for flight attendants on Wednesday, aiming to hire another 80 flight attendants.
V Air, which began service on Dec. 17 with a maiden flight to Bangkok, drew 1,600 applicants when it announced it was hiring its first 80 flight attendants in March last year.
The new campaign is aimed at improving the quality of service on V Air’s expanding flight network, which could extend to Japan and South Korea next year.
The starting salary being offered is NT$50,000 per month — about twice the average pay of new office workers in Taiwan — and the carrier said people who speak Japanese, Korean or Thai, and those with nursing experience will be given priority consideration.
Singapore housing prices fall
Singapore’s housing prices dropped for a fifth consecutive quarter, the longest drop in more than a decade, as tighter mortgage curbs cooled demand in Asia’s second-most expensive housing market.
An index tracking private residential prices fell 1 percent to 205.8 points in the three months ended on Wednesday, the longest stretch of declines since March 2004, and bringing the slide to 4.9 percent from the record-high set in September 2013, according to preliminary data released by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority yesterday.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
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