■ Foreign reserves hit record
Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves rose to a record high US$227.66 billion at the end of last month, the central bank said yesterday. The figure was up US$1.14 billion from the US$226.52 billion recorded a month earlier and up US$21.03 billion from a year earlier, the bank said. The increase reflects returns from forex reserves management and companies' early disposals of forward contracts on foreign currency, the Central Bank of China said in a statement. Taiwan's foreign reserves rank behind those of Japan and China.
■ Compal April sales rises
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), the world's second-largest notebook computer maker, said last month sales rose 22 percent from a year ago to NT$14.4 billion (US$434 million), the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Sales rose from NT$11.9 billion in April last year. They were little changed from NT$14.4 billion in the previous month, the statement said. The company last week reported NT$1.6 billion in net income for the first quarter of the year, a slide of 54 percent from the previous quarter, due to a NT$479 million loss on foreign currency exchange. The first-quarter figures was down 30 percent on the year, the company said.
■ Chunghwa Picture forecast up
Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation's third-largest liquid-crystal-display (LCD) maker, yesterday officially announced a revised forecast for this year, the company said in its Web site. With anticipated growth in both shipment and sales fuelled by better-than-expected market demands, the company adjusts upward its consolidated revenue to NT$128.9 billion from NT$121.3 billion it predicted in December last year. Net income is expected to double to NT$17.3 billion from NT$8.2 billion. Estimated earnings per share also increased to NT$2.59, twice as much as original NT$1.25. The company yesterday also posted a record high monthly consolidated revenue of NT$11.3 billion last month, a minor rise of 3.1 percent from last month, or a huge leap of 91.4 percent from a year ago.
■ BOT to sell insurance holding
Bank of Taiwan (BOT, 台灣銀行), Taiwan's largest lender by assets, plans to sell its stake in Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽). Tokyo-based Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co may bid for the 27 percent holding, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information. The sale is part of plans to reduce the ratio of long-term equity holdings to its capital, BOT said in a statement. Taiwan Life shares closed yesterday at NT$60, valuing BOT's stake at about NT$6 billion (US$180 million). Taiwan Life Insurance shares have risen 22 percent so far this year.
■ NT dollar trims gain
The New Taiwan dollar pared gains after the TAIEX fell to its lowest in more than four months, sparking speculation overseas investors sold equities and will curb demand for the currency. The New Taiwan dollar rose NT$0.025 against its US counterpart to close at NT$33.252 on the Taipei foreign exchange market, after rising as much as 0.2 percent to NT$33.20. Turnover was US$488 million. "People are concerned about whether there will be fund outflows from the stock market so the New Taiwan dollar is a little pressured," said Sam Ku, a currency trader at The Chinese Bank (中華銀行) in Taipei.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day