Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗) yesterday reported positive results from an interim analysis of phase 2 trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the vaccine demonstrated high seroconversion rates and geometric mean titer (GMT) figures.
A seroconversion rate is the percentage of participants in a trial displaying virus-specific immune memory after being given a vaccine, while the GMT measures the level of neutralizing antibody response, Medigen said.
The experimental vaccine has a seroconversion rate of 99.8 percent and its GMT was 662 among the participants aged 20 to 89, while the gauges rose to 99.9 percent and 733 respectively in participants aged
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), the nation’s largest container shipping firm in terms of fleet size, on Tuesday reported a net profit of NT$17.16 billion (US$618 million) for last month, 14 times more than a year earlier due to rising freight rates.
The firm’s earnings per share were NT$2.91 last month, equivalent to about 41 percent of the NT$7.04 earnings per share it made in the first quarter.
Revenue increased 145 percent year-on-year to NT$34.4 billion, Evergreen said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Evergreen said that unprecedented increases in freight rates and improvements in operating expense controls enabled it to
Listed companies reported record profits from their Chinese and overseas investments in the first quarter, thanks to rising demand for work-from-home products, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said on Tuesday.
During the first three months of the year, listed companies posted a combined profit of NT$107.5 billion (US$3.87 billion) from their investments in China, up 361 percent from a year earlier and the highest for the period, the FSC said.
The commission attributed the increase primarily to contributions by electronics firms which reported combined profits of NT$35.6 billion last quarter, up from NT$9.3 billion a year earlier and petrochemical firms
Local banks’ overseas branches regained momentum in April as their pretax profits rose 147 percent year-on-year to NT$3.45 billion (US$124.45 million), compared with an annual decline of 23.2 percent in the first quarter, Financial Supervisory Commission data showed.
Banks’ overseas branches were under less pressure from bad loans in April, enabling them to set fewer loan provisions and write off fewer bad loans, Banking Bureau Deputy Director-General Huang Kuang-hsi (黃光熙) told a videoconference on Thursday.
Overseas branches had been battling with rising non-performing loans since the middle of last year, as many of their debtors failed to repay loans because the COVID-19
The average annual salary of employees at publicly listed firms last year rose 4 percent year-on-year to NT$967,021 (US$34,884), beating the nation’s GDP growth of 2.98 percent, but the firm with the highest average wage offered 12.5 times more than the one with the lowest, indicating uneven salary growth in Taiwan, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) said.
The percentage was lower than the difference of 15.8 percent recorded in 2019.
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), registered an average annual wage of NT$4.19 million and a total of 171 employees last year, ranking it first