China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), Taiwan’s biggest steelmaker, yesterday said its pretax loss shrank to NT$840 million (US$27.45 million) last month, from a loss of NT$1.58 billion a month earlier, due to improved gross margin.
The company also reported an increase in non-operating income from renewable energy subsidiary Zhong Neng Offshore Wind Farm (中能離岸風電) and higher dividend income from its mining investments.
Zhong Neng, an offshore wind farm off the coast of Changhua County, sold 46.21 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity last month, up from 22.46 million kWh a month earlier, the wind farm said in its monthly report.
Photo: CNA
Zhong Neng is a project codeveloped by CSC and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, but is now fully owned by CSC’s subsidiary Zhong Fa Holding Limited (中發控股).
During the first seven months, CSC accumulated NT$2.41 billion in pretax losses, reversing a pretax profit of NT$4.08 billion during the same period last year, the statement said.
CSC attributed the worse financial performance to a reduction steel shipments and lower average selling prices, leading to revenue decline and larger operating losses on an annual basis, a statement said.
Meanwhile, higher mining costs drove up expenditures from non-operating items, it said.
Revenue dropped 11 percent year-on-year to NT$192.66 billion in the first seven months of this year, from NT$217.6 billion, CSC said.
The company shipped a total of 4.36 million tonnes during the January to last month period, it said.
The company said it is positive about the steel industry’s outlook for the rest of this year, given that the easing global trade situation and potential rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve by the end of the year would lead to a recovery in demand.
CSC expects the global steel market to stabilize, supported by steady US and European demand, and China’s efforts to curb excessive production and lower inventory.
China’s Baoshan Iron & Steel Co (寶鋼) and Vietnam-based Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業) earlier this month raised some steel prices by 200 yuan (US$28) and US$11 per tonne respectively, CSC said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS