ELECTRONICS
Inventec revenue hits high
Contract electronics maker Inventec Corp (英業達) yesterday said that revenue last month reached a 41-month high on rising shipments of servers, notebook computers and handheld devices. Revenue expanded 4.19 percent year-on-year and 21.27 percent month-on-month to NT$41.898 billion (US$1.37 billion), bringing cumulative revenue in the first six months of this year to NT$210.87 billion, up 3.53 percent from the same period last year, the company said.
PANELMAKERS
Innolux sales jump 26.5%
Innolux Corp (群創), the nation’s largest flat-panel maker, reported that second-quarter sales soared by double-digits from a year earlier on the back of a spike in product prices. The company posted NT$84.5 billion in consolidated sales, jumping 26.5 percent from a year earlier, but declining 1.8 percent quarterly. Innolux said it last quarter shipped 29.13 million large-sized panels, up 8.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, while shipments of small-sized panels dropped 4.3 percent to 59.17 million units. Smaller rival HannStar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶) on Thursday reported second-quarter sales of NT$4.71 billion, down 24.52 percent from NT$6.24 billion in the first quarter.
FINANCE
CTBC income soars 88.65%
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) on Thursday said that net income last month rose 88.65 percent monthly to NT$5.32 billion, bringing cumulative earnings in the first half of the year to NT$19.39 billion, up 35.59 percent from the same period last year. Earnings per share in the six-month period were NT$1. The company attributed rising profits to slower appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar and sound investment performance. Earnings contribution from insurance unit Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽保險) over the first half of the year rose 77 percent annually, it added.
CONSUMER GOODS
Taiwan Paiho sales jump
Taiwan Paiho Ltd (台灣百和), which supplies shoelaces and elastic tape, reported that sales last month soared 17.7 percent annually to NT$957.03 million, driven by rising demand for four-way stretchable elastic bands. In the first half of the year, sales totaled NT$5.66 billion, an increase of 9.25 percent year-on-year, the firm said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday.
TECHNOLOGY
Egis revenue up 759 percent
Fingerprint sensor provider Egis Technology Inc (神盾) on Thursday reported that revenue last month rebounded to NT$296 million, an increase of 759 percent annually and 17 percent monthly. Second-quarter revenue declined 26 percent quarterly, Egis said, citing inventory digestion by a key customer. However, the second-quarter figure marked an annual increase of 247 percent, company data showed.
LIFE INSURANCE
Hybrid issuance to continue
The nation’s life insurers are expected to continue issuing hybrid capital securities in a bid to support their solvency, Fitch Ratings Inc said in a news release on Thursday. Since last year, life insurers have issued more than NT$160 billion of hybrid securities, with most of them being perpetual cumulative subordinated notes and callable 10 years from the date of issuance, Fitch said. However, some insurers are approaching the regulatory limit on hybrid issuance of 20 percent of available capital under the government’s risk-based capital regime, which will limit their further issuance, it said.
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
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For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
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