AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) is planning to build an advanced flat-panel plant in Taichung, aiming for commercial production by 2025, the Hsinchu-based company said on Friday, as it reported a record net profit for last year, driven by strong global demand.
AUO chief financial officer Benjamin Tseng (曾煜智) told an investors’ conference that the company’s board had approved increasing its capital expenditure budget by NT$28 billion (US$1.01 billion) this year, part of which would be allocated to the construction of the new plant.
AUO expects an overall capital expenditure of NT$45 billion this year, Tseng said.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
AUO chairman Paul Peng (彭双浪) said the company would spend more next year to install the plant’s equipment and prepare for its commercial operations by 2025.
The new plant would be in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) in Taichung’s Houli District (后里), Peng said.
AUO president and chief operating officer Frank Ko (柯富仁) said the plant would be a smart production site for advanced 8.5th and perhaps 8.6th-generation flat screens, as part of AUO’s efforts to set up micro-LED display production.
The company is weighing whether to use amorphous silicon technology or low-temperature polysilicon technology on the plant’s production lines, Ko said.
AUO reported a record NT$61.33 billion in net profit for last year, up 1,716.5 percent from a year earlier, with earnings per share of NT$6.44, compared with NT$0.36 in 2020.
Its consolidated sales rose 36.8 percent year-on-year to NT$370.69 billion last year, the company said.
AUO said it benefited from a booming global stay-at-home economy in the first half of last year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the second half, when many countries eased movement restrictions, business activity increased, driving demand for products in the business sector, it added.
Gross margin grew to 24.5 percent, compared with 8.4 percent in 2020, AUO said.
Screen shipments rose 0.6 percent from a year earlier to 25.72 million square meters last year, the company said.
Peng said shipments of large screens dropped sharply in the second half of last year, but the decline has been showing signs of moderating, while inventory levels have reached healthy levels.
So far this year, inflationary pressure has pushed up raw material prices, creating uncertainty in the flat-panel industry, he said.
With the global electric vehicle market gaining momentum, business opportunities are growing in the industry, which might offset the weakness of the TV panel market, Peng said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”