Show sets attendance record
The Taipei Computer Applications Show ended yesterday after seeing a record 600,000 visitors over its five-day run. That was almost double the number of visitors last year and exceeded the organizers' target of 400,000, co-organizer Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會) said.
The show attracted 320,000 visitors last year. The increase in visitors could be attributed to the decision to allow free entry to the show this year, officials said.
Farglory Land launches IPO
Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) made its debut on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday at an initial offering price (IPO) of NT$71. The shares rallied to NT$71.5 in early trading, but ended the day down NT$0.4 to NT$70.60.
Farglory shares were previously traded on the over-the-counter GRETAI Securities Market.
Despite the unimpressive first day performance, Farglory chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄) said he was confident that the firm's shares will surpass Shining Building Business Co (鄉林建設) as one of the highest priced construction stocks in one or two years.
Shares of Shining edged up 1.83 percent to NT$111 yesterday.
Local insurers hurt by US woes
Taiwan's insurers and Singaporean banks have been the main victim of the recent US sub-prime mortgage crisis, Citigroup said in the report released yesterday.
The sell-off of Asian financial companies is overdone as the impact of US subprime asset-quality problems and falling prices of structured products should be manageable -- unless there is a broader re-pricing of collateralized debt obligation risk and credit spreads that results in significant loss for even the highest grade investments, Citigroup said.
Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) and Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) and Singapore's DBS have most exposed with US$1 billion, US$600 million and US$850 million of such investments, the report said.
Assuming a potential loss ratio of 20 percent for the entire portfolio, losses would be equivalent to 7 percent, 1.5 percent and 2 percent of their book values, which remains manageable and not material, Citigroup said.
Chunghwa eyes Vietnam deal
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and its Vietnamese counterpart, Viettel, will establish a joint venture to explore the Internet data service market in Vietnam, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday.
The report said Chunghwa Telecom has been looking at investing in Vietnam for about a year, hoping to make inroads abroad in the face of a saturated telecoms market at home.
Chunghwa Telecom expects to expand the business of the new company beyond the planned Internet data services in the future, it said, without naming sources.
The telecom declined to comment on the report.
Taiwan Mobile rating raised
The research investment firm Macquarie yesterday upgraded Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), from "underperform" to "outperform," citing improving margins after the firm merged with Taiwan Fixed Networks (TFN, 台灣固網).
The consolidation of TFN will help the nation's No. 2 phone company boost its EBITDA by 10 percent year-on-year this year, but the outlook for the core wireless business looks a little tougher in the second half of the year, Macquarie said in a report yesterday.
Taiwan Mobile's failure to secure a WiMAX license was hurting the stock, but the impact was minor on a one-year view and this presents an attractive opportunity, Macquarie said.
It raised its price target for Taiwan Mobile for the next 12 months to NT$45.5 from NT$28.17.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts