Solar cell module maker Motech Industries Inc (茂迪) yesterday reported that net profit last quarter jumped 234 percent to NT$78 million (US$2.42 million) from the second quarter as it shipped more high-margin modules equipped with N-type TOPCon solar cells.
However, on an annual basis, net profit dropped 19.6 percent from NT$97 million.
Earnings per share were NT$0.2, up from NT$0.06 a quarter earlier, but down from NT$0.25 a year earlier, it said.
Photo: Chang Huei-wen, Taipei Times
Gross margin climbed to 15.6 percent from 13.3 percent in the April-to-June period and 13.7 percent from a year earlier.
Robust demand from overseas, primarily Japan, also drove shipments higher and improved the company’s financial performance, Motech spokesman Ting Wang (王丁召) told investors.
“The company’s business hit a trough in the second quarter and started to rebound in the third quarter,” Wang said.
Motech said it expects revenue this quarter to be little changed from NT$955 million last quarter, as sales would improve this month and next month from a low of NT$222 million last month.
Domestic solar companies are suffering due to an unfavorable external environment in the second half of this year, as large-scale solar project developers are slowing the pace of solar installments ahead of the Jan. 13 presidential elections, the company said.
“The impact is enormous,” Wang said. “Besides, it is time-consuming to go through the paperwork from different government agencies to install solar panels above fishing ponds. It took much longer than we expected.”
Motech holds a cautious outlook regarding market demand next year and hopes to have a better picture of demand after the elections, Wang said.
The company will continue upgrading its production lines to maintain its technology leadership, he said.
Motech is ahead of its peers in receiving certification for the new generation of M10 solar panels and plans to convert all of its M6 solar panels to larger M10s from June next year, Wang said.
The conversion would help boost its domestic annual capacity to about 400 megawatts from 350 megawatts this year, Wang said.
Motech also plans to upgrade its factory in Maanshan in China’s Anhui Province, which has an installed capacity of 300 megawatts, he said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS