While the landmark agreement on non-stop charter flights for the Lunar New Year holidays has been applauded by both business and political sectors, the breakthrough is expected to give little stimulation to airline stocks, analysts said yesterday -- though it should boost the overall market.
"The one-off charter flights are only a short-term, subject-oriented bullish factor and are not expected to make a substantial contribution to the carriers' earnings per share," Terry Wang (
"The news will not bring much stimulation to the airline stocks," he said.
Another market watcher agreed, saying that investors had already priced in the expected agreement on charter flights reached last weekend.
"It's overdue good news," said George Wu (
Wu said the latest agreement came after most China-based Taiwanese businessmen had already booked their flight tickets, which could lead to difficulty for participating airlines in getting business.
Taiwan and China agreed over the weekend on two-way, non-stop charter flights for the Lunar New Year holiday, allowing six Chinese carriers and six Taiwanese airlines, including China Airlines Corp (
China Airlines, which is scheduled to operate the first flight to Beijing at 4:05am on January 29, will fly between Taipei and Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzou during the holidays.
Eva Airways will fly between Taipei and Beijing and Shanghai.
The breakthrough could be seen as an indication of a thaw in relations between Taiwan and China, which could be good news for the dismal local bourse, Wang said.
"Improving cross-strait relations could help draw more foreign funds and revitalize the stock market," Wang added.
There could be a chance for the benchmark TAIEX to return and stand firm above 6,000 points before the Lunar New Year if daily stock turnover keeps increasing to over NT$70 billion or NT$80 billion to bolster investor momentum, he said.
Last week, China Airlines forecast pretax profit of NT$4.4 billion on revenue of NT$105.6 billion for this year, up from NT$96.1 billion last year. The nation's largest air carrier is expected to issue earnings of NT$1.46 and NT$1.44 per share for last year and this one, according to SinoPac Capital Management Corp (
Eva Airways, which posted sales of NT$75.1 billion for the first eleven months of last year, is expected to issue earnings of NT$1.14 and NT$1.22 per share for last and this year, SinoPac said.
SinoPac predicted a target price of NT$24 for China Airlines and NT$20 for Eva Airways. The two companies closed up by 1.66 percent and 3.27 percent at NT$18.40 and NT$15.80 last Friday.
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
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
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],”
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