AUTO PARTS
BizLink sales slump
Wire harness maker BizLink Holding Inc (貿聯) yesterday posted consolidated sales of US$54.95 million for last month, a 4.27 percent month-on-month and 10.72 percent year-on-year decrease. The company blamed the fall on the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused many nations to impose a variety of restrictions, negatively affecting global supply chains. BizLink, an exclusive harness supplier to US electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc, said cumulative sales in the first quarter were US$164.41 million, down 7.35 percent from the same period last year.
INTERNET
Vivotek sees weak demand
Internet security solutions provider Vivotek Inc (晶睿科技) yesterday posted revenue of NT$589 million (US$19.48 million) for last month, an 18.47 percent month-on-month increase, but down 6.7 percent from a year earlier. As the firm’s three major plants are in Taiwan and it has a sufficient supply of raw materials, the COVID-19 pandemic has not had a substantial impact on production, Vivotek said. However, the escalating outbreak, and lockdowns in the US and Europe, would likely lead to weakening demand, it said. Revenue in the first quarter was NT$1.58 billion, up 17.04 percent quarter-on-quarter, but down 7.76 percent year-on-year.
MEMORY CHIPS
Adata revenue soars
Adata Technology Co (威剛科技), the world’s second-largest memory module supplier, yesterday posted revenue of NT$2.86 billion for last month, up 16.82 percent from NT$2.45 billion in February, as it benefited from rising shipments in the DRAM and solid-state drive (SSD) segments. That was 25.96 percent higher than NT$2.27 billion the previous year and the highest in 20 months, company data showed. Adata revenue rose 12.13 percent year-on-year to NT$7.19 billion in the first quarter, with the DRAM segment contributing 45.5 percent of sales, SSD 31.2 percent and NAND flash memory 12.85 percent.
PERIPHERALS
Chicony bullish on Q2
Chicony Power Technology Co (群光電能), which makes computer peripherals, yesterday posted consolidated revenue of NT$2.76 billion for last month, an 82.2 percent month-on-month and 2.2 percent year-on-year increase, and the highest level for March in the company’s history. Consolidated revenue in the first quarter decreased 7.2 percent year-on-year to NT$6.71 billion, less than the company’s guidance of a fall of 8 to 10 percent. The company resumed full production in China at the end of last month, which would help boost shipments this quarter, Chicony Power president Peter Tseng (曾國華) said. The company could benefit from rush orders for power supplies used in commercial and education-based laptops as remote working and online teaching become more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts said.
ELECTRONICS
HTC sales inch higher
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday posted consolidated sales of NT$432.25 million for last month, a 3.13 percent increase from a month earlier and ending two consecutive months of decline. However, last month’s sales were 67.07 percent lower than the same period last year. HTC attributed the decline to lower shipments. Cumulative sales in the first quarter were NT$1.33 billion, down 54.83 percent year-on-year, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to