The combined revenue of Formosa Plastics Group’s (FPG, 台塑集團) four major subsidiaries last month fell by a double-digit percentage point from a year earlier, as the COVID-19 pandemic weakened downstream demand and reduced average selling prices.
The consolidated revenue of Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) and Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維) totaled NT$76.57 billion (US$2.57 billion), a decline of 40.4 percent, the firms’ stock exchange filings on Friday showed.
On a monthly basis, their combined revenue was up 1.5 percent from April on the back of a 15.9 percent increase in revenue at Formosa Petrochemical, the nation’s only listed oil refiner.
It said its revenue grew 15.9 percent month-on-month to NT$25.69 billion, as sales in its refining business rose 25.2 percent and its naphtha business expanded 11.2 percent.
It attributed its strong refining business expansion to higher refining output and oil prices, while the growth in naphtha business was mainly due to a sales increase in olefins.
Compared with a year earlier, revenue fell 55.9 percent as the COVID-19 outbreak and a collapse in demand caused sales at the refining business to plunge 61.7 percent and those at the naphtha cracking business to tumble by 50.5 percent, Formosa Petrochemical said.
Nan Ya Plastics reported the smallest annual decrease in revenue of the four, down 21.7 percent to NT$19.42 billion, a drop of 4.86 percent from April.
“The COVID-19 pandemic had a continuous impact on global economics and led to a sluggish end market demand, dragging down sales volume and product prices,” Nan Ya Plastics said in its filing.
The company, whose lineup includes plastics, chemicals, polyesters and electronic materials, said revenue generated from its Taiwanese operations decreased 21.5 percent from a year earlier and revenue from its Chinese operations fell 15.17 percent, while the US revenue dropped 37.31 percent.
Flagship unit Formosa Plastics Corp reported revenue of NT$13.45 billion, down 29.2 percent annually as the prices of its major products fell by 19.58 percent from a year earlier.
Revenue was 8.8 percent lower, which Formosa Plastics attributed to a decline in sales of polyvinyl chloride amid lower demand in Europe and the US, falling sales of ethylene vinyl acetate used for shoes affected by the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, as well as a decreased demand for polypropylene (PP) from customers.
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre’s reported revenue fell 31.7 percent year-on-year to NT$18.01 billion, a decline of just 0.7 percent from April.
Selling prices of its major product acetone remained steady on the back of epidemic prevention demand, it said.
However, the prices of other products were affected by COVID-19, lower oil prices and new production capacity in China, with the exception of the prices of phenol, acetone, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and PP, it said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS