■ Shares rise on chip hopes
Shares rose for the fourth consecutive session yesterday on hopes of a strong second quarter for chipmakers. The TAIEX rose 44.18 points, or 0.69 percent, to 6,498.03, on turn-over of NT$81.30 billion (US$2.50 billion). Risers led decliners 473 to 370, with 215 stocks unchanged. "There's talk that Taiwan's semiconductor inventories are at a low level, while second-quarter orders may increase significantly," said Horace Lin, a manager at Masterlink Securities Corp (元富證券). Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (台積電), the world's largest contract chipmaker, rose 0.8 percent to NT$61.9 after the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported that the chipmaker may buy a production plant from a rival this year to meet demand, citing Elizabeth Sun (孫又文), head of institutional investor relations at the company. Rival rival United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) gained 1 percent to NT$19.7, underpinned by an ongoing share buy-back plan.
■ Chunghwa announces dividend
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's largest provider of phone services, said its board declared a full-year cash dividend of NT$4.30 (US$0.14) per share from earnings last year. The proposed dividend includes a stock dividend of 20 shares for every 1,000 shares held by the investor, the company said in a statement issued late on Tuesday. This was the company's first stock dividend, the statement said. Profit fell 7.4 percent to NT$46.2 billion last year, and sales rose 0.5 percent to NT$183.4 billion, according to preliminary figures from the company in January.
■ New bourse expected
The financial regulator will launch an international bourse to list and trade greenback-denominated bonds by year's end in a bid to attract more foreign investors, Reuters reported yesterday, citing Lee Shyan-yuan (李賢源), one of the policymakers at the Financial Supervisory Commission. Lee said the board would list supranational debt, private issuer bonds, euro convertible bonds and debt of companies listed domestically and on 18 key exchange around the world, Lee said in an interview with the agency. The nation's securitization market is expected to see a doubling of issues this year to NT$200 billion (US$6 billion), Lee said, adding that he is also optimistic about the market for REITs (real estate investment trusts) and CBOs (collateralized bond obligations).
■ NPL ratio on the up
The non-performing loan ratios of Taiwanese banks on credit and cash cards exceeded a 3 percent record last month, the Financial Supervisory Commission reported on Tuesday. The NPL ratio for credit cards reached 3.02 percent last month, up 0.27 percent from the previous month, while that of cash cards rose 0.64 percent to 3.12 percent over the same period of time. Domestic banks wrote off about NT$30 billion (US$921 million) of bad loans on credit and cash cards in the first two months of this year, the commission said. Total outstanding credit card balances fell by NT$22 billion, or around 17.53 percent, to NT$103.5 billion last month from the previous month, the commission said. Rising defaults on consumer lending may lower the nation's economic growth rate by a range between 0.15 percent and 0.25 percent for this year, the commission's spokesman Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正) said.
NT stays weak
The New Taiwan dollar remained weak against its US counterpart yesterday, falling NT$0.021 to close at NT$32.598 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$818 million.
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