AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) is planning to build an advanced flat-panel plant in Taichung, aiming for commercial production by 2025, the Hsinchu-based company said on Friday, as it reported a record net profit for last year, driven by strong global demand.
AUO chief financial officer Benjamin Tseng (曾煜智) told an investors’ conference that the company’s board had approved increasing its capital expenditure budget by NT$28 billion (US$1.01 billion) this year, part of which would be allocated to the construction of the new plant.
AUO expects an overall capital expenditure of NT$45 billion this year, Tseng said.
Photo: Chen Mei-ying, Taipei Times
AUO chairman Paul Peng (彭双浪) said the company would spend more next year to install the plant’s equipment and prepare for its commercial operations by 2025.
The new plant would be in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) in Taichung’s Houli District (后里), Peng said.
AUO president and chief operating officer Frank Ko (柯富仁) said the plant would be a smart production site for advanced 8.5th and perhaps 8.6th-generation flat screens, as part of AUO’s efforts to set up micro-LED display production.
The company is weighing whether to use amorphous silicon technology or low-temperature polysilicon technology on the plant’s production lines, Ko said.
AUO reported a record NT$61.33 billion in net profit for last year, up 1,716.5 percent from a year earlier, with earnings per share of NT$6.44, compared with NT$0.36 in 2020.
Its consolidated sales rose 36.8 percent year-on-year to NT$370.69 billion last year, the company said.
AUO said it benefited from a booming global stay-at-home economy in the first half of last year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the second half, when many countries eased movement restrictions, business activity increased, driving demand for products in the business sector, it added.
Gross margin grew to 24.5 percent, compared with 8.4 percent in 2020, AUO said.
Screen shipments rose 0.6 percent from a year earlier to 25.72 million square meters last year, the company said.
Peng said shipments of large screens dropped sharply in the second half of last year, but the decline has been showing signs of moderating, while inventory levels have reached healthy levels.
So far this year, inflationary pressure has pushed up raw material prices, creating uncertainty in the flat-panel industry, he said.
With the global electric vehicle market gaining momentum, business opportunities are growing in the industry, which might offset the weakness of the TV panel market, Peng said.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
RSS