■ TAIEX rides US wave
The TAIEX rose yesterday after gains in US peers underpinned optimism that growth in the industry will help boost earnings.
The index added 172.76, or 3.1 percent, to 5,729.30. TAIEX futures for July delivery gained 2.2 percent to 5,660.
Financial shares advanced for a second day after Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc said it will give full weight to the nation's stocks in global indexes.
Foreign investors as of Monday held 12.3 percent of financial stocks, which as a group have a 20.7 percent representation in the TAIEX, according to statistics from the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Procomp Informatics Co (博達科技) fell 6.6 percent to NT$6.40. Stock regulators will suspend trading of the stock today after the company failed to explain why it defaulted on a bond payment due last Thursday.
■ Phone camera modules up
Taiwanese mobile phone camera module shipments are expected to reach approximately 73 million units this year, the Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心) said in a statement yesterday.
Growing 5.5-fold from 13 million units last year, Taiwanese camera modules are predicted to comprise 40 percent of the global market, the research house said.
Built-in camera modules are anticipated to account for roughly 90 percent of Taiwanese shipments this year, compared to about 60 percent last year. Attachment modules comprised 40 percent of 2003 volume.
■ Compal tops pay list
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) pays its board members the most of all listed companies in the country, a Chinese-language newspaper said, citing statistics collected from annual reports.
The average pay for Compal's board is NT$203.6 million (US$6 million), followed by NT$169.6 million for Pou Chen Corp (寶成) and NT$127.8 million for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the report said.
Next on the list were Inventec Co (英業達), Far Eastern Textile Ltd (遠東紡織) and China Steel Corp (中鋼), the paper reported.
Compal, the world's second-largest maker of notebook computers, increased its net income by 43 percent last year to NT$11.3 billion from a year earlier.
■ Banks' NPL ratios improve
Taiwanese banks have improved their performance by lowering their non-performing loan (NPL) ratios in the year's first quarter, the central bank said.
Domestic banks posted an average NPL ratio of 4.4 percent for the year's first three months, the central bank's statistics showed.
Some banks in charge of special designations have outperformed general commercial banks. The Export-Import Bank (進出口銀行) registered the lowest NPL ratio with 0.37 percent for the same period, while the China Development Industrial Bank's (中華開發) ratio was 1.66 percent.
At the same time, privately-run banks performed better than state-controlled ones. E.Sun Bank (玉山銀行) and Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) recorded NPL ratios of 1.42 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.
State-run banks such as Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) posted 2.98 percent, while Medium Business Bank of Taiwan (中小企銀) and Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) had higher ratios of 10.35 percent and 5.92 percent.
■ NT dollar down
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.050 to close at NT$33.780 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$619 million.
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