Shares ended higher yesterday as investors focused on companies' solid earnings outlook for the year, financial analysts said.
The market opened cautiously after Wall Street's mixed performance overnight, but a strong showing by flat-panel makers gave sentiment a push.
The TAIEX closed up 81.41 points, or 1.2 percent, at 6,818.20, recouping some of Thursday's 2.1 percent decline.
Gainers outnumbered decliners 575 to 222, with 173 issues unchanged. Trading was valued at NT$184.91 billion (US$5.6 billion), compared with NT$199.3 billion on Thursday.
"Now everybody is speculating domestic politics should remain relatively calm before the presidential inauguration on May 20. And the market is focusing on the good economy this year," said Alex Yang, senior vice president at SinoPac Capital Management (
Flat-panel makers soared as demand for their products in the second quarter looks solid, countering earlier expectations the period could prove a slack one for the sector.
AU Optronics Corp (
The country's second-largest flat-panel maker, Chi Mei Opto-electronics Corp (
Buying was fueled by Samsung Electronics' outlook, analysts said.
The South Korean company -- a leading global producer of memory chips, flat panels and other electronics products -- said it expects strong gains across its business divisions in the second quarter and into the second half.
First Taisec Securities (
"Riding on the sharp correction yesterday, investors were eager to hunt for bargains among companies with [strong] earnings prospects," he said.
Most DRAM chipmakers recovered from early losses. Winbond Electronics Corp (
Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts