A majority of Taiwanese CEOs voiced confidence about the economy, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, surpassing than peers in the region and around the world, thanks to enhanced operating models and the nation’s quick control of its COVID-19 outbreak, a survey released yesterday by KPMG Taiwan showed.
The pandemic is taking a toll on the sentiment of CEOs around the world, including Taiwan, but the effects are less severe among local chief executives, said the survey, which polled 50 local chief executive officers.
Taiwan’s efficient control of novel coronavirus infections lends support to the relatively rosy sentiment, while efforts to upgrade business models among local companies also paid off, the accounting firm said.
Thirty-eight percent of Taiwanese CEOs believe their companies can achieve revenue growth this year, while another 22 percent are looking at flat showings, it said.
The public health crisis drove 78 percent of the CEOs to rank global supply chain realignment as the most pressing matter, the survey found, after earlier lockdowns in China disrupted supply of materials used in electronic devices and hindered labor flows.
As most countries maintain border controls and quarantines to contain the virus, many companies consider manufacturing products locally, KPMG Taiwan said, adding that talent disruptions are also high on the list of concerns.
Forty percent of Taiwanese CEOs think it is important to speed up digital transformation for their companies and 50 percent are willing to spend money in upcoming technologies to reach that goal, the survey showed.
In addition, companies would assign more importance to climate change, public health and environmental sustainability in planning their operations, it said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by