Shin Kong Financial Holding Co's (新光金控) first-half net income rose by 52 percent from a year ago on strong growth in premiums at its life insurance arm, the company said yesterday.
The company, the nation's eighth-largest financial group by assets, said its holdings of asset-backed securities (ABS) collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) related to US subprime home loans will suffer a limited impact from the recent market meltdown.
An estimated 37 percent of its NT$10.52 billion (US$319.9 million) ABS CDOs were invested in the US subprime market as of end of last month, the company said.
"We didn't see any downgrade to our ABS CDOs, which are all A-rated or above," Winston Yung (榮覺生), Shin Kong Financial's chief financial officer, told an investor conference.
"We will hold the CDOs to maturity unless the situation gets worse," he said.
Shares of Shin Kong Financial closed up NT$1.05, or 2.94 percent, to NT$36.8 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The company released its latest financial figures after the market closed.
The company posted first half net income of NT$9.24 billion, or NT$1.9 per share, mostly contributed by flagship Shin Kong Life Insurance (新光人壽) -- the nation's second-largest life insurer -- which generated NT$7.8 billion on strong first-year premium that jumped by 52 percent to NT$47 billion, the company said in a statement.
Despite a one-time provision of NT$350 million for its loans to the financially-troubled Ya Hsin Industrial Co (雅新實業), Shin Kong Bank (新光銀行) swung into the black with net income improved to NT$202 million for the first half.
This was compared to a deficit of NT$2,209 million in the same period last year at Shin Kong Bank, the company said in the statement.
In the first half of the year, Shin Kong's fee income soared by 71 percent to NT$783 million, mainly from the bank unit's wealth management sector, the statement said.
The bank's non-performing loan ratio for the first half was 2.21 percent.
"By and large, the performance is in accordance with our previous expectation," Vincent Chang (
Since Shin Kong Financial's shares took a tumble last week amid concern about the US subprime mortgage market, Chang suggested investors to do some bottom feeding on future prospects.
Shin Kong Life Insurance, meanwhile, expects the growth momentum of its first year premiums to remain through the second half of the year, with the better-than-expected sales of variable universal life insurance products.
The insurer also expects its application to set up a joint-venture in China to be approved by the Chinese authorities soon, Shin Kong Financial spokesman Victor Hsu (
Shin Kong Bank is aiming for a 10 percent to 15 percent growth rate in its loan sector, and expects strong demand to continue driving up its wealth management division's income, it said.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS