TECHNOLOGY
King Yuan sales rise 2.42%
IC testing service provider King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電) yesterday reported revenue of NT$3.27 billion (US$118.3 million) for last month, up 2.42 percent month-on-month and 38.07 percent year-on-year. Revenue last quarter increased 6 percent to NT$9.53 billion — a record for the fourth quarter — as the company benefited from increased demand for chips used in 5G, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications. King Yuan’s revenue for the whole of last year rose 16.58 percent to NT$33.76 billion from 2020, also a company record.
CERTIFICATION
Sporton revenue hits record
Sporton International Inc (耕興), which provides professional product testing and certification services, yesterday reported that its revenue last month increased 17.75 percent month-on-month and 30.53 percent year-on-year to a record NT$412.27 million. Sporton said that it attributed the increase to robust demand in Taiwan and the US, as the markets continue to migrate to 5G technology. Revenue in the fourth quarter rose 18.11 percent to NT$1.11 billion from a year earlier, while revenue for the whole of last year reached NT$4.32 billion, up 22.94 percent from 2020, it said.
AIRLINES
CAL announces pay hike
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) yesterday said that it would give employees an annual bonus equal to six months’ wages and offer a 4 percent pay increase this year. CAL, the only Taiwanese carrier that made a profit in the first three quarters of last year, posted a net profit of nearly NT$1.56 billion. In the first 11 months of last year, its revenue increased 15.99 percent annually to NT$121.94 billion. The company is expected to continue benefiting from elevated cargo demand and robust air freight rates this year, Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評) said in October, after raising its outlook for the airline from “negative” to “stable.”
STEELMAKERS
Yieh Hsing to expand plant
Steelmaker Yieh Hsing Enterprise Co (燁興企業) yesterday said it would invest NT$1.272 billion to expand its plant at the Ping Nan Industrial Park (屏南工業區) in Pingtung County. The capacity of the plant, which supplies steel wires and stainless steel pipes, is expected to expand to 450,000 tonnes per year from 300,000 tonnes, Yieh Hsing said, adding that it plans to complete the expansion in two years. The money would also be used to upgrade facilities and install solar panels as the company seeks to improve the competitiveness of its product line, and comply with policies on energy savings and the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, it said in a regulatory filing.
UNITED STATES
Greenback ‘to get stronger’
The US dollar is expected to become stronger in the first half of the year, but face downward pressure in the second half, as capital might leave the US if its fiscal and account deficits persist while economies elsewhere recover, Standard Chartered Bank (Taiwan) Ltd (渣打國際商業銀行) said on Wednesday. Investors are advised to hold gold positions to hedge against volatility, as Standard Chartered believes virtual assets such as bitcoin are less effective at hedging against volatility, Standard Chartered investment strategy head Allen Liu (劉家豪) said. Cryptocurrencies are more like a special investment, which can hardly replace gold, he said.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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