TAIEX hits 14-month high
Shares rose to a 14-month high yesterday, led by memory-chip stocks on expectations of strong contract prices next month.
The TAIEX rose 79.37 points, or 1.3 percent, to 6,357.83, its highest closing level since it ended at 6,402.21 on April 29 last year.
"The increase in turnover bodes well. DRAM stocks ... pushed up the entire electronics sector," said Andrew Teng (鄧安瀾), a manager at Taiwan International Securities (金鼎證券).
Jobless rate up to 4.1 percent
Unemployment rate rose to 4.10 percent last month from 4.04 percent in April, but was down from 4.41 percent a year earlier, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics announced yesterday.
A total of 424,000 people were unemployed last month, 7,000 more than in April. Unemployment in the first five months of the year averaged 4.13 percent, down 0.34 percentage points from a year earlier, it said.
"The marginal month-on-month increase, due largely to seasonal factors, was hardly a surprise," DGBAS' Deputy Director Liu Beei-chern (劉碧珍) said.
The rise in the number of first-time job seekers who failed to find work last month reflected graduates coming into the market, a trend likely to persist through to August, he said.
NT dollar advances
The New Taiwan dollar traded higher against its US counterpart, advancing NT$0.035 to close at NT$31.355 on the Taipei foreign-exchange market. Turnover was US$666 million, up from US$628 million the previous day.
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