Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) says investors this year should buy Taiwan construction-related stocks such as Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥) and Continental Engineering Corp (大陸工程) to take advantage of increased government infrastructure spending and as a "defense" against slowing exports.
A strengthening New Taiwan dollar and China's attempts to curb economic growth may hurt Tai-wanese exporters, Sherry Lin (林淑娥), head of Taiwan research at CSFB, wrote in a report yesterday.
The government forecasts export growth will slow to 7.4 percent this year after jumping 20.7 percent last year.
Lin recommends investors be overweight on "non-tech" stocks and companies that will benefit from increased demand for domestic construction.
Last June the government passed a NT$500 billion (US$15.7 billion) budget to be spent on 10 public works projects to spur investment and growth.
The TAIEX, adjusted for currency changes based on the US dollar, rose 11.8 percent last year, the 10th worst performer among 60 indexes tracked by Bloomberg. Without adjusting for the NT dol-lar's appreciation against its US counterpart, the index rose 4.2 per-cent last year. The index has fallen 3.4 percent this year.
"2004 was a huge disappointment, particularly when it was such a good year for the economy," Lin said. "The new calendar year does not bring any relief to lackluster markets."
"A combination of slowing US and China economies, peaking trade and domestic consumption, rising interest rates and a falling US dollar seems like a perfect storm ready to swamp the bourse here," she said.
Lin said Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc's decision to have Taiwanese companies given full market representation in its in-dexes starting on May 31 could limit declines, although it was "certainly not a rally-rousing catalyst."
CSFB has a "outperform" rating on Continental Engineering, and CTCI Corp (中鼎工程). Taiwan Cement was its top pick among contractors, Jim Hung, an analyst at CSFB, wrote in the report.
CSFB also said investors should not completely abandon technol-ogy stocks.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained