Yageo Corp’s (國巨) founding chairman Pierre Chen (陳泰銘) is to resume his previous position of chief executive officer after the company saw net profit plunge 87 percent year-on-year last quarter, dragged by slower inventory digestion and sluggish demand.
Yageo, the world’s No. 3 multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) supplier, said that its board of directors approved the personnel adjustment on Friday as the company continued to grapple with an industry slump and economic uncertainty stemming from the US-China trade dispute.
Five years ago, Chen relinquished his CEO position to Dora Chang (張綺雯), who was Yageo’s chief financial officer at the time.
The company expects to “make a seamless transition, as Chen has been well involved in the development of the passive components industry and the company’s operation strategies,” Yageo said in a statement.
“He will continue to lead Yageo’s expansion into high-end markets for automotive electronics and industrial segments, and enlarge the value of the industry, shareholders, customers and employees,” the company said.
The personnel adjustments are to take effect on Friday next week. Chang is also to be chairperson and CEO of Pulse Electronics Corp, a passive-components maker Yageo acquired in November last year for US$740 million.
Looking ahead, Yageo said it “remains conservative about its business outlook during the second half, with US-China trade disputes tipped to heighten,” Yageo said in the statement. “The company will deal cautiously with such a situation.”
The trade spat might dampen a nascent recovery after three quarters of inventory correction, the company said. Customer demand in Asia, the US and Europe is expected to pick up gradually amid decreasing excess inventory levels in its supply chain.
Net profit sank to NT$1.42 billion (US$45.26 million) in the quarter ended June 30, compared with NT$10.8 billion in the same period last year, the weakest quarterly net profit in eight quarters, Yageo said on Friday.
On a quarterly basis, net profit fell 45 percent from NT$2.59 billion in the first quarter, it said.
Earnings per share fell to NT$3.34 last quarter, compared with NT$6.11 in the previous quarter and NT$25.7 a year earlier.
Worsening earnings have made Yageo a big under-performer over the past seven months.
From Jan. 2 to Friday, its stock price fell 18 percent to NT$257, while the TAIEX rallied 10.14 percent in the same period.
Yageo shares have plunged 67.67 percent since they closed at NT$795 on Aug. 1 last year.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
OPEN SCIENCE: International collaboration on math and science will persevere even if the incoming Trump administration imposes strict controls, Nvidia’s CEO said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said on Saturday that global cooperation in technology would continue even if the incoming US administration imposes stricter export controls on advanced computing products. US president-elect Donald Trump, in his first term in office, imposed restrictions on the sale of US technology to China citing national security — a policy continued under US President Joe Biden. The curbs forced Nvidia, the world’s leading maker of chips used for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, to change its product lineup in China. The US chipmaking giant last week reported record-high quarterly revenue on the back of strong AI chip