Shares closed up 0.87 percent yesterday at the day's highs on follow-through interest after the market finished above an important benchmark of 9,000 points on Wednesday, dealers said.
Trading could have driven prices higher had investors not cashed in some of their recent solid gains, reflecting a build-up in caution at this point, they said.
The TAIEX closed up 79.80 points at a high of 9,148.78. Turnover reached NT$197.31 billion (US$5.98 billion).
Overseas investors yesterday bought a net NT$12.45 billion worth in shares, compared with NT$5.27 billion net bought by domestic investment trust companies and NT$294 million net bought by domestic proprietary traders, according to stock exchange's data.
Shares of Innolux Display Corp (群創光電), the world's second-largest maker of liquid-crystal-display computer monitors, climbed to a record, as foreign investors continued buying the company's stocks after the company posted its largest monthly profit ever.
Innolux stock climbed 6.8 percent, the daily limit, to close at NT$148.50. The stock has almost tripled since its listing on the Taiwan stock exchange in October last year.
Net income during May jumped almost 29-fold from a year earlier to NT$1.19 billion (US$36 million), while sales increased 76 percent to NT$13 billion, Miaoli-based Innolux said in a statement on Wednesday. Earnings in May exceeded the company's first-quarter profit of NT$1.04 billion.
Profit surged after a "very slow" second-quarter last year, Innolux chief financial officer Thomas Hsu (許嘉成) said in a phone interview yesterday. The company is having a "much better" year this year, he said.
The company, which doesn't usually report monthly earnings, disclosed its May results after a request from the Taiwan Stock Exchange to comment on "abnormal" trading, Hsu said.
Local major high-tech companies are scheduled to start reporting second-quarter earnings from late this month and the market usually will use the results to gauge the strength of the tech sector's recovery.
Nan Ya Printed Circuit Board Corp (南亞電路), a maker of boards that connect the chips in personal computers, gained 1.7 percent to NT$205. Nan Ya's stock recommendation was raised to "hold" from "sell" by Pearl Lin, an analyst at Yuanta Securities Corp (元大證券). Lin wrote in a report dated yesterday that rising demand will boost the company's July revenue by 7 percent to 10 percent from June.
With a perceived strong momentum ahead, Mega International Investment Service (
But Jih Sun Securities Investment Consulting Co (日盛投顧) deputy manager Wilson Lien (連偉勝) said the chances of the market heading for a pullback are fast growing.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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