Staff reporter
Wisdom Marine Lines Co (慧洋海運) yesterday reported a monthly decline in revenue and pretax profit for last month due to reduced demand amid the Lunar New Year holiday and lower shipping rates.
The nation’s largest bulk shipper registered revenue of NT$1.93 billion (US$69.37 million) and pretax profit of NT$865 million for last month, down 6.3 percent and 22 percent respectively from a month earlier, it said.
Demand for bulk shipping dropped before the Lunar New Year holiday, contributing to the revenue decline, the company said.
Supply disruptions and demand for iron ore also affected its business, it said, adding that heavy rain forced miners in Brazil to halt operations last month, while China placed restrictions on iron output to improve air quality ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the shipping rates of all types of ships, continued to slide last month, closing at 1,381 points at the end of last month, compared with 2,217 points at the end of December last year and a peak of 5,000 points in October.
However, Wisdom Marine said that the factors driving down freight rates should not last long and it still holds an upbeat outlook for shipping rates this year due to ongoing congestion at seaports worldwide and a low turnover of vessels.
On an annual basis, Wisdom’s revenue rose 71.3 percent and its pretax profit jumped 350 percent, as freight rates remained relatively stable in the first half of last year, company data showed.
Pretax earnings per share were NT$1.16 last month, up from NT$0.26 a year earlier, data showed.
Wisdom last month took delivery of two new vessels — a handysize ship with deadweight tonnage of 37,000 and a Panamax vessel with deadweight tonnage of 82,400 — raising its fleet size to 136 and maintaining its title as Taiwan’s largest bulk shipper, it said.
For this year, the company said it is on track to adjust the contracts of 60 of its vessels and plans to increase shipping rates in new contracts by 25 percent.
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
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
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