CTCI Corp (中鼎工程), which builds refinery and power plant facilities, said that it is seeking new business opportunities in “green” energy and pollution reduction projects as demand from refinery clients weakens.
“Since last year, the battle between OPEC and US oil shale producers has led to a glut, forcing prices down amid waning demand from emerging markets, and we have been preparing for this tremendous shakeup,” CTCI spokesperson Hsiao Ming-cheng (蕭明證) told an investors conference on Wednesday.
The company is to bid for air pollution reduction contracts at power plants in Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia before the end of the year, Hsiao said.
The company also plans to continue improving its frontend engineering design services to attract more construction contracts and pursue additional maintenance revenues from existing clients, Hsiao added.
The company reported that sales in the first eight months of this year grew 13.93 percent to NT$40.8 billion (US$1.23 billion), while net income in the first half rose 14 percent year-on-year to NT$988.65 million, or NT$1.31 per share.
As of August, the company reported NT$18 billion in new contracts, compared with NT$77.9 billion last year, while backlog contracts reached NT$166.8 billion, compared with NT$187.1 billion a year earlier.
Refinery and petrochemical projects accounted for 37 percent and 8 percent respectively of new contracts this year, the company said.
To weather the downturn in global oil and petrochemical industries, the company is seeking higher value-added segments, such as contracts for natural gas field facilities, light natural gas export terminals, hydrogenated styrenic block copolymers, and C4 and C5 derivative product plants, Hsiao said.
The company also plans to bolster its service offerings by obtaining upstream technologies such as ethylene crackers, cryogenic tanks, and signal systems for mass rapid transit systems by with strategic partners and through acquisitions.
Next year the company is hoping to tap into the NT$570.6 billion in contract revenues across the globe, of which NT$181.2 billion are non-oil and petrochemical projects.
“As OPEC has established a marked price advantage over US oil shale producers, we anticipate oversupply to begin diminishing gradually, but the situation is more favorable for the US shale gas segment,” Hsiao said.
In the US market, the company is upbeat on continued investments in the country’s shale gas industries, as the cost of US shale gas as feedstock to produce ethylene is lower than naphtha sourced from Asia, seeing growth potential driven by ethylene glycol, ethylene oxide and low-density polyethylene.
CTCI shares rose 4.25 percent to close at NT$40.5 on Friday in Taipei trading outperforming the market’s 0.11 percent gain that day.
The Executive Yuan’s Public Construction Commission said that it has selected CTCI to spearhead its program to export the nation’s expertise in building power plants to the Middle East and Southeast Asian markets.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that Intel Corp would find itself in the same predicament as it did four years ago if its board does not come up with a core business strategy. Chang made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions about the ailing US chipmaker, once an archrival of TSMC, during a news conference in Taipei for the launch of the second volume of his autobiography. Intel unexpectedly announced the immediate retirement of former chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger last week, ending his nearly four-year tenure and ending his attempts to revive the
WORLD DOMINATION: TSMC’s lead over second-placed Samsung has grown as the latter faces increased Chinese competition and the end of clients’ product life cycles Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) retained the No. 1 title in the global pure-play wafer foundry business in the third quarter of this year, seeing its market share growing to 64.9 percent to leave South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the No. 2 supplier, further behind, Taipei-based TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report. TSMC posted US$23.53 billion in sales in the July-September period, up 13.0 percent from a quarter earlier, which boosted its market share to 64.9 percent, up from 62.3 percent in the second quarter, the report issued on Monday last week showed. TSMC benefited from the debut of flagship
A former ASML Holding NV employee is facing a lawsuit in the Netherlands over suspected theft of trade secrets, Dutch public broadcaster NOS said, in the latest breach of the maker of advanced chip-manufacturing equipment. The 43-year-old Russian engineer, who is suspected of stealing documents such as microchip manuals from ASML, is expected to appear at a court in Rotterdam today, NOS reported on Friday. He is accused of multiple violations of the sanctions legislation and has been given a 20-year entry ban by the Dutch government, the report said. The Dutch company makes machines needed to produce high-end chips that power
Taiwan would remain in the same international network for carrying out cross-border payments and would not be marginalized on the world stage, despite jostling among international powers, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday. Yang made the remarks during a speech at an annual event organized by Financial Information Service Co (財金資訊), which oversees Taiwan’s banking, payment and settlement systems. “The US dollar will remain the world’s major cross-border payment tool, given its high liquidity, legality and safe-haven status,” Yang said. Russia is pushing for a new cross-border payment system and highlighted the issue during a BRICS summit in October. The existing system
RSS