King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電子) yesterday said it would shut down its factories for 48 hours to be thoroughly disinfected amid concern over COVID-19 infections linked to its manufacturing campus in Miaoli County.
As of yesterday, 67 King Yuan employees, mostly migrant workers from the Philippines, had tested positive for the disease after a large-scale rapid screening program was launched for the company’s 7,300 workers.
King Yuan, a chip testing and packaging service provider, had resisted halting production for fear of disrupting supply, kindling anger among employees and nearby residents.
Photo provided by King Yuan Electronics Co via CNA
King Yuan, headquartered in Hsinchu City, counts handset chip supplier MediaTek Inc (聯發科), display driver IC maker Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠) and international corporations among its customers.
The production disruption would reduce output and revenue alike by between 4 and 6 percent this month, as its six plants in Hsinchu, and Miaoli’s Tongluo (銅鑼) and (竹南) Jhunan townships would shut down.
King Yuan posted NT$2.86 billion (US$103.17 million) in revenue last month, expanding 10.72 percent from NT$2.58 billion in May last year. That brought the company’s revenue in the first five months of this year to NT$12.17 billion, up 8.87 percent year-on-year.
The shutdown would not affect its financial performance for the full year this year, the company said.
King Yuan was the world’s No. 8 chip testing and packaging service provider last quarter, with revenue of NT$267 million, a tally market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) showed.
That gave King Yuan a market share of 3.7 percent.
Real estate agent and property developer JSL Construction & Development Co (愛山林) led the average compensation rankings among companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) finished 14th. JSL Construction paid its employees total average compensation of NT$4.78 million (US$159,701), down 13.5 percent from a year earlier, but still ahead of the most profitable listed tech giants, including TSMC, TWSE data showed. Last year, the average compensation (which includes salary, overtime, bonuses and allowances) paid by TSMC rose 21.6 percent to reach about NT$3.33 million, lifting its ranking by 10 notches
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS