SEMICONDUCTORS
TSMC revenue falls 17.2%
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said revenue fell 17.2 percent month-on-month, but rose 23.6 percent year-on-year to NT$67.04 billion (US$2.04 billion). Cumulative revenue for the first eight months of the year totaled NT$575.47 billion, up 23.6 percent from a year earlier, the company said. In July, TSMC forecast its revenue for this quarter would grow by between 0.76 percent and 2.22 percent from last quarter to between NT$207 billion and NT$210 billion.
MICROCHIPS
ASE bid rejection urged
Chip tester and packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密) yesterday again urged shareholders to reject the share purchase bid by bigger rival Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), saying the ASE offer was purely opportunistic and undervalued the company. On Aug. 24, ASE launched an unsolicited NT$35 billion bid to buy a 25 percent stake in SPIL, with SPIL responding days later by engaging in a share swap with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密).
ENTERTAINMENT
XPEC sets revenue record
Game developer XPEC Entertainment Inc (樂陞科技) yesterday said revenue hit the highest level in the company’s history last month, which boosted its shares to rise 2.5 percent in Taipei trading. The company’s consolidated sales reached NT$246 million last month, up 217.5 percent from a year earlier and 6.09 percent from the previous month, mainly because of contributions from its art production business and synergies from its recent merger and acquisition activities, XPEC said.
FOOTWEAR
Pou Chen’s sales up 10.42%
Footwear supplier Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業) yesterday said sales last month increased 10.42 percent from a year ago, but were flat from July. With consolidated revenue of NT$21.66 billion last month, the company’s total revenue in the first eight months this year rose 10.62 percent year-on-year to NT$176.16 billion, thanks to an influx of orders amid an international outsourcing trend, according to Pou Chen, which supplies footwear products to global vendors.
CONVENIENCE STOREs
President sees sales growth
President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), which operates 7-Eleven convenience stores, on Wednesday reported its sales grew 2.19 percent monthly and 2.79 percent annually to NT$18.12 billion, with aggregate sales in the first eight months of the year rising 1.35 percent year-on-year to NT$135.49 billion. Meanwhile, Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店), the nation’s second-largest convenience store operator, said revenues declined 2.33 percent monthly, but rose 2.36 percent annually to NT$5.18 billion last month. Aggregate sales in the January-to-August period rose 2.63 percent to NT$38.54 billion, it said.
FINANCE
Cathay reports income slide
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) on Wednesday said net income last month slid 81.83 percent to NT1.67 billion from July, with aggregate income in the first eight months of this year growing 24.68 percent year-on-year to NT$52.09 billion, or NT$4.11 per share. The company’s life insurance unit, Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), reported some capital losses while still delivering a well-contained hedging cost last month, including a NT$1.6 billion provision for foreign exchange reserve in the month, the company said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
IMAGE SENSORS: The Japanese company would be the controlling shareholder of the venture, with development and production lines to be set up in Kumamoto Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp to create a joint venture to develop and produce next-generation images sensors. The partnership seeks to explore and address emerging opportunities in physical artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as automotive and robotics, paving the way for innovations and expanded technological advancements, TSMC said in a statement. Sony would be the majority and controlling shareholder of the joint venture, the statement said, adding that the company would set up development and production lines in its newly constructed fab in Kumamoto Prefecture’s
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