State-run Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) yesterday said it expects profitability to improve in the second half of the year, despite a lackluster showing in the first six months, as growing vaccination rates at home and abroad would make operating conditions more friendly.
The lender stood by its revenue target for this year, although net income for the first six months declined 1.84 percent to NT$4.17 billion (US$150.15 million), narrower than a retreat of 7.5 percent in the first quarter, Chang Hwa Bank spokesman Chen Bin (陳斌) told an online investors’ conference.
Earnings per share rose to NT$0.4, from NT$0.19 at the end of March.
Photo: CNA
The improvement came after the lender stepped up loans to small and medium-sized enterprises, while trimming lending to big corporations and government agencies.
Chang Hwa Bank’s loan-to-deposit ratio edged up to 76.39 percent last quarter, compared with 76.15 percent three months earlier, and should gain strength moving forward, officials said.
Revenue contributions from overseas outlets and offshore banking units stood at 35.1 percent, slowing from 37.5 percent for the whole of last year.
The downtrend might reverse in the second half, as the world further emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, giving customers and the bank more confidence about doing business, officials said.
Likewise, the domestic market, which has taken a hit from a local COVID-19 outbreak, is expected to recover this or next month, as the number of confirmed cases has dwindled to single digits, while the vaccination rate has steadily increased, officials said.
Fee income shrank 0.32 percent in the first half though sales of wealth management products picked up mildly, officials said.
Net interest margin gained 3 basis points from the previous quarter to 0.89 percent, while the lending spread widened to 1.18 percent.
Chang Hwa Bank said it would raise its holdings of local shares during price corrections, guided by the principle of stability in dealing with investment funds.
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
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
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
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
RSS