For the fourth consecutive year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufac-turing Co (TSMC, 台積電) outperformed 630 Taiwan-listed companies to grab the Investor Relations (IR) magazine award for best investor services in the country, according to survey results released last week.
"The award will compel us to do a better job in providing investors, big or small, with complete access to company information," TSMC spokesman Tzeng Jinnhaw (曾晉皓) said yesterday.
In second and third place were Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (
"[Through IR service], not only can Chinatrust Financial's corporate value be presented but investors can also deliver their opinions to us, which has become a driving force behind our future development," Lin Shiaw-ping (林孝平), Chinatrust Financial's chief strategic officer, said yesterday.
Foreign investors currently hold more than a 50 percent share of the company.
The magazine conducted 475 phone interviews, including 35 in Taiwan, in 10 Asian countries during August and September before tallying the overall results. The respondents were primarily portfolio managers, buy-side analysts and sell-side analysts, all of whom were asked to nominate leading companies -- both overall and country-specific -- in the most important areas of investor relations activities.
The magazine developed a ranking system to credit a company with five points for every mention as best in a category, and three points for every mention of second-best.
TSMC was declared to be the winner in the Taiwan-specific category with 132 points, followed by Chinatrust Financial's 21 points and Formosa Plastics' 18 points.
When stacked up against three other Asian companies, the contract chipmaker also rated second-best in board communications, behind Singapore Telecommunications Inc (SingTel).
TSMC ranked sixth among Asian companies in organizing roadshows and investment meetings.
For small or midcap companies (defined as those with a market capitalization below US$1 billion), another Taiwanese company -- Asustek Computer Inc (
"It provides information very honestly and is willing to see clients at lunches and conferences," the magazine quoted one respondent as saying about Asustek.
"It provides updated information and has well-briefed investor-relations staff," another respondent said.
The survey also probed the current state of the investor relations field, to discover which countries had most improved, which were still in need of improvement and which were the most important to institutional investors in Asia.
According to the survey's findings, China, the Philippines and Taiwan are this year's least improved, with only 69 percent of respondents saying investor relations are improving -- down from 80 percent in China and Philippines last year, and 83 percent in Taiwan.
Slightly disagreeing with the finding, Morgan Stanley executive director Gary Kuo (郭冠群) said more and more Taiwanese companies are making efforts to improve their investor relations as well as corporate governance, to prevent their respective share prices from being undervalued.
The winner in the "most improved" category was Indonesia, which showed a big turnaround from last year when it was rated worst in the category. This year 100 percent of respondents agreed that the country's investor relations had improved.
Respondents felt that for Asian companies, transparency, sensibility to information needs, results announcements and the number of personal interactions had all greatly improved.
The frequency of interactions was seen as the most important quality to ensure the investment community is well served.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six