BOOKSTORES
Taitung Eslite to close
Eslite Spectrum Corp (誠品生活), which runs the Eslite bookstore chain (誠品書局) and other businesses in Taiwan and abroad, on Friday said it would close its Taitung store at the end of this month when the lease for the site expires. The announcement comes after the company closed an outlet in Tainan’s Anping District (安平) at the end of last month. The company had previously announced plans to close its landmark 24-hour outlet on Taipei’s Dunhua S Road at the end of next month, when its lease expires, which would reduce the number of outlets in Taiwan to 42.
AIRLINES
CAL delays new flights
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) on Friday announced that it would delay the launch of its flights to Cebu in the Philippines and Chiang Mai in Thailand until October. It pushed back a planned launch date of June 12 for six weekly flights to Cebu until Oct. 1 and postponed the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Chiang Mai route from the original June 23 launch date to Oct. 2 amid concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, CAL said in a statement.
INVESTMENT
CDFHC unveils dividend
China Development Financial Holding Corp’s (CDFHC, 中華開發金控) board of directors on Friday announced that it would distribute a cash dividend of NT$0.6 per share, which represented a payout ratio of 68.18 percent based on the company’s earnings per share of NT$0.88 last year. The company is the only financial holding firm among its local peers to provide a dividend yield higher than 7 percent — 7.38 percent, based on the stock’s closing price of NT$8.13 on Friday.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”