Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud.
The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder.
Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said.
Photo: Anindito Mukherjee, Bloomberg
Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the company’s expansions at home and abroad, as well as Gogoro’s initial public offering on the NASDAQ.
Gogoro did not disclose the reason behind Luke’s decision to leave the company he founded 13 years ago.
“After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to step down from my role as CEO and chairman of Gogoro. This decision has not been easy, but I believe it is the right time for the company and I to transition leadership as we embark on the next phase of growth,” Luke said in an internal e-mail sent to Gogoro employees. “My confidence in Gogoro’s bright future remains steadfast. I will always be Gogoro’s biggest advocate, and I look forward to seeing the company continue to grow and succeed from a new vantage point.”
As the company has been struggling to eke out a profit, poor financial performance is widely considered to be the main factor for Luke’s departure. Losses ballooned from US$5.6 million in the second quarter last year to US$20.1 million for the same period this year. Gross margin also plunged from 15.2 percent a year ago to 5.2 percent last quarter.
As of Thursday, Gogoro’s stock price has tumbled about 92 percent from its closing price of US$14.02 during its IPO in 2022 to US$1.05, indicating that investors have lost confidence in the company’s prospects.
In addition, former employees have tipped off the Ministry of Economic Affairs about Gorogo’s alleged subsidy fraud, Business Today reported on Wednesday.
Gogoro has allegedly been using Chinese engines and key parts to reduce manufacturing costs, despite reporting to the ministry that it was using locally made parts to get government subsidies, it said.
Gogoro has received more than NT$600 million (US$18.75 million) in subsidies by allegedly faking domestic key components, the report said.
The ministry said it has received tip-offs and is investigating Gogoro’s practices. The ministry grants special subsidies to encourage adoption of domestically made key parts.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
RSS