■ Shares up 0.39 percent
Shares closed 0.39 percent higher yesterday, although profit-taking placed a lid on early gains inspired by the modest advance on Wall Street overnight, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed up 29.25 points at 7,474.19, on turnover of NT$125.01 billion (US$3.85 billion).
Decliners led advancers 657 to 528, with 191 stocks unchanged.
■ Formosa raises gas price
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the nation's second-biggest fuel supplier, raised gasoline and diesel prices for the first time in three weeks, matching a move by larger rival Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油).
Domestic wholesale gasoline prices increased NT$1.1 a liter, and those of diesel NT$1.2, effective 9am, Formosa Petrochemical said in a statement.
■ NT dollar up on stock purchases
The New Taiwan dollar climbed to a more than three-month high yesterday, as overseas investors boosted purchases of the nation's stocks, traders said.
The NT dollar rose NT$0.175 to close at NT$32.5 against the US dollar on the Taipei Forex Inc. Turnover was US$1.303 billion.
Commenting on the strengthening NT dollar, central bank governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) said that the local unit was influenced by the broad decline in the US dollar and backed by continued foreign capital inflows for Taiwan's stocks.
Twelve of the 15 most actively traded Asia-Pacific currencies climbed also against the US dollar yesterday, spurred by gains in the yen after a report showed that Japanese industrial production had unexpectedly risen last month.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by