Taiwan's 10-year bonds rose, sending the yield to its least in almost three weeks, after the Ministry of Finance said it would reduce its debt sales next quarter and the New Taiwan dollar snapped four days of gains.
The government plans to sell between NT$80 billion (US$2.4 billion) and NT$90 billion of bonds in the three months to Sept. 30, the finance ministry said on Saturday in a statement on its Web site. That's less than the NT$110 billion the government sold in the July-to-September period last year.
"The bond sale plan is positive news for the market," said George Pu, a bond trader at President Securities Corp (統一證券). "Bonds available in the market will decrease."
The yield on the benchmark 1 7/8 percent bond maturing March 2017 declined 7.4 basis points, or 0.074 percentage points, to close at 2.405 percent, the lowest since June 6, GRETAI Securities Market data showed.
Its price climbed 0.6201, or NT$620.1 per NT$100,000 face amount, to 95.4515. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
The NT dollar weakened on speculation a four-day, 1.2 percent gain, which on Saturday sent it to the highest since Jan. 11, was too fast. The currency advanced last week partly because the central bank lifted interest rates.
"The Taiwan dollar may stay steady as the central bank increased rates and also has showed quite a strong determination to halt the currency's declines," said Osamu Takashima, chief analyst of the global markets sales and trading division at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd in Tokyo. The NT dollar closed NT$0.029 down at NT$32.765 on the Taipei Forex Inc yesterday.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products