Stocks gained for a second day. Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's largest supplier of made-to-order chips, advanced after Goldman, Sachs & Co raised its earnings forecast for the company.
Stocks also rose after US President George W. Bush welcomed a UK proposal to force Iraq to show it's disarming.
The TAIEX added 50.84, or 1.2 percent, to close at 4,378.99. About six stocks gained for each one that fell. The value of trade was NT$48.9 billion (US$140 million), 35 percent lower than the daily average in the past three months.
"The market is expecting a US-Iraq war to be resolved quickly," said Joe Wu, an analyst at Truswell Securities Investment Trust Co (
"There are buyers out there waiting to jump in on abating signs of uncertainty," he said.
TSMC added NT$1.10, to NT$44.10 after Goldman Sachs raised its earnings forecast for the company's first quarter, for this year and next, according to a research report sent to investors.
MSCI Taiwan futures for March delivery in Singapore rose 1.8 percent to 185.70, while the Taiwan Futures Index rose 1.2 percent to 4,356.
Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (
MediaTek Inc (
Nan Ya Plastics Corp (
Net income of Nan Ya, the nation's biggest plastics maker, surged to NT$2.94 billion from NT$734 million in the year-earlier quarter, while sales rose 23 percent to NT$27.2 billion. The figures were derived by subtracting nine-month from full-year earnings.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by