China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) and its labor union on Thursday reached an agreement to distribute year-end bonuses of an average of six months wages, the best bonus distributed in the company’s 62-year history.
The airline is also to raise wages by at least 4 percent, matching salary increases for the nation’s teachers, military personnel and civil servants, the union said in a statement.
As the airline last year posted profit thanks to its booming air cargo business, the company would distribute generous bonuses, the union said.
Photo courtesy of China Airlines via CNA
With 21 cargo jets, China Airlines is the largest provider of air cargo services in Taiwan.
The company reported cumulative net profit of NT$1.55 billion (US$55.98 million) for the first three quarters of last year, compared with a net loss of NT$2.02 billion in the same period of 2020, the union said.
During the first 11 months of last year, revenue grew 16 percent annually to NT$121.94 billion, corporate data showed.
This year, the airline plans to continue focusing on its air cargo business, but would also try to boost its passenger business, the company said in a statement.
Separately, EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) did not verify local media reports that it had agreed to distribute year-end bonuses of as high as about 1.5 months’ wages, but said that employees would receive bonuses based on their work performance.
EVA reported a cumulative net loss of NT$569 million in the first three quarters of last year, improving from a net loss of NT$3.64 billion in the same period of 2020, corporate data showed.
With seven cargo jets, EVA has a lower cargo capacity than China Airlines, and generated less revenue from its air freight business, data released by the two firms showed.
For the first 11 months of last year, EVA’s sales grew 11.8 percent to NT$91.5 billion, corporate data showed.
China Airlines’ share price fell 1.46 percent to NT$27 in Taipei trading yesterday, while EVA’s share price dipped 1.1 percent to NT$27, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
RSS