Shinkong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), the nation's third-largest life insurer, expects its hedging costs to nearly triple from last year after the insurer raised the proportion of overseas investments in its portfolios against a background of a weakening US dollar, the company said yesterday.
"We expect hedging costs to reach NT$5 billion this year, up from some NT$1.9 billion last year," Hsu Shun-yun (徐順鋆), manager of the accounting department at Shinkong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), Shinkong Life's parent company, told a media briefing yesterday.
The insurer's hedging expenses added up to NT$2.2 billion over the first six months of this year, which can be translated into a hedging-cost rate of around 2.8 percent, up from around 2 percent previously, according to the company.
The company is considering several options that could reduce its hedging costs, including natural hedging or basket hedging by diversifying the number of currencies in its portfolio and reducing exposure to the greenback, Shinkong Life's asset allocation manager Will Chung (
In pursuit of better investment returns, the insurer poured more than NT$30 billion (US$934 million) into its overseas portfolio over the previous two months, bringing its overseas investment ratio to 34.4 percent at the end of July, from 30.6 percent in May, according to the company's figures. This level is approaching the regulatory limit of 35 percent.
Shinkong Life had a net yield rate of between 3.5 percent and 4 percent, equivalent to a return of NT$1.2 billion per month, from its overseas investments after deducting the hedging cost, Hsu said.
The insurer said the yield rate of domestic investments was between 2.5 percent and 3 percent in May.
Shinkong Financial's January-July earnings of NT$6.47 billion, or NT$1.91 per share, beat its earlier financial forecast by 6 percent.
Chinatrust Financial Holding Co's (中信金控) earnings per share over the same period stood at NT$1.91 and those of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) at NT$1.71, making Shinkong Financial one of the most lucrative investment targets in the finance sector.
Shinkong Financial hopes to garner another NT$700 million from cash dividends this month on top of the NT$1.5 billion cash dividend income for the first half of the year, Hsu said.
"Shinkong Financial has strong fundamentals, despite the recent allegations about insider trading, which should have only a short-term psychological influence on its share price," Chu Yu-chun (朱玉君), a finance analyst at SinoPac Securities Corp (建華證券), said in a report released last week.
The securities house expected Shinkong Financial, the nation's seventh largest financial holdings firm by assets, to report earnings of NT$7 billion, or NT$2.06 per share, this year. It has raised its target share price for the second half of the year to NT$40 from NT$35 and is recommending bottom fishing for the firm's shares.
The Taipei Prosecutors' Office indicted the financial holdings firm's chairman Eugene Wu (
Shinkong Financial spokesman Victor Hsu (
Shinkong Financial shares closed 0.17 percent higher at NT$29.85 on the Taiwan Stock exchange yesterday.
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