Semiconductor ills, Wall Street decline drag down shares

Shares closed down yesterday on Wall Street declines and a worsening view of the semiconductor sector, dealers said.

Rising oil prices also caused concerns that demand for the country's high-tech exports may be hurt in major markets like the US and Europe.

The TAIEX finished 42.99 points lower, or 0.7 percent, at 5849.22 in dealings valued at NT$57.07 billion (US$1.67 billion). Decliners well outnumbered advancers 460 to 214, while 149 issues ended the day unchanged.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (台積電), the world's largest contract chipmaker, lost 1.6 percent to NT$43, while rival and global No. 2 United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) fell to a new 52-week low of NT$20.50, down 2.4 percent on the day.

"The drop in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index confirms the fact the chip sector peaked in the April-June period," said Alan Tseng, a vice president at Capital Securities Corp (群益證券) in Taipei.

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Corp (日月光), the world's largest independent company that tests chips for defects and packages them in protective materials, dropped 3.5 percent to NT$21.9. Its US-listed shares fell 2.1 percent on Friday.

The nation's largest chip design firm, MediaTek Inc (聯發科技), lost 4.1 percent to NT$213, while ALi Corp (揚智科技) fell 6.9 percent to NT$20.40.

Some computer memory chipmakers bucked the decline. Power-chip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the country's largest memory chipmaker, rose 0.8 percent to NT$25.6 and Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) added 0.7 percent to NT$28, after online chip clearinghouse DRAMeXchange reported rising memory chip prices.