Shares in Thailand and Taiwan, among Asia's worst performers of the past year, are the region's best picks for investors, according to Nomura Holdings Inc.
"In terms of valuations, the most attractive markets must be in Thailand and Taiwan," Sean Darby, Nomura's Hong Kong-based head of regional strategy, said yesterday in an interview in Singapore. "A lot of the bad news is in the price."
Thailand's SET Index has gained just 18 percent in the past 12 months, beating only Japan, while Taiwan's TAIEX has trailed all other major Asian markets apart from Australia.
The SET is valued at about 11 times earnings, the lowest among 14 regional benchmarks covered by Nomura, while the TAIEX is at 13 times, according to the brokerage's estimates. China's CSI 300 Index is the most expensive at 41 times, followed by India's Sensitive Index at 21 times, Nomura figures show.
The SET has jumped 12 percent since May 30, when a court acquitted the country's second-largest political group of violating laws in last year's election, paving the way for a return to democracy after prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was removed by military leaders in a September coup.
Meanwhile, foreign investors bought a daily average of NT$9.2 billion (US$281 million) of Taiwanese stocks in the past month, more than three times the daily average of NT$2.4 billion this year. That helped the TAIEX surge 9.1 percent last month, its best monthly performance since July 2003.
Taishin Financial Holdings Co, Formosa Petrochemical Corp. and Taiwan Fertilizer Co are among the stocks Darby recommends investors buy.
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
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
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
RSS