REAL ESTATE
Ting Hsin to sell TFCC stake
Japan’s Itochu Corp on Friday filed an application to the Investment Commission to acquire Ting Hsin International Group’s (頂新集團) entire stake in Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓), which operates the Taipei 101 skyscraper. Ting Hsin, which has been plagued by a domestic food scandal that erupted in 2013, plans to sell its 37.2 percent stake in TFCC for US$600 million to the Japanese company, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) reported on Saturday. Ting Hsin said it has chosen the best investor to operate Taipei 101.
ELECTRONICS
King Yuan to boost capacity
Chip packaging and testing services supplier King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電子) on Friday said its board has approved a NT$5.5 billion (US$184.27 million) capital expenditure budget for this year, up 24.43 percent from the NT$4.42 billion spent last year on new facilities and equipment. The budget would be used to boost capacity next year, a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange said. King Yuan plans to use its own capital to fund the capacity expansion plan.
RETAIL
Clevo to sell store to mall
Contract notebook computer maker Clevo Co (藍天電腦) on Thursday said its China-based retail chain faces significant pressure as physical stores have been negatively affected by the rise of e-commerce. Clevo said it plans to sell Wuhan Buynow (武漢百腦匯) to Wuhan Chicony Shopping Mall (武漢群光百貨), which is in the same group with Clevo, for a disposal gain of US$5.06 million. The company said the gains would contribute earnings per share of about NT$1.53 for last year.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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