Shares of motherboard maker Asrock Inc (華擎) rallied 8.4 percent during its debut on the main bourse, defying the benchmark TAIEX's 3.90 percent loss following the plunge in the US overnight on growing subprime mortgage concerns.
Asrock stock rose NT$21 to NT$271 from its listing price of NT$250 per share. The 7 percent daily limit does not apply to the trading of new shares in the first five sessions. Asrock shares were traded on the smaller Emerging Stock Market (
Asrock is a motherboard brand owned by the world's biggest motherboard maker Asustek Computer Inc (
But, the five-year-old company said last week that it planned to shift its focus to middle-range and high-end products to boost profits as growth in the low-end area slows amid rising competition from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (
SinoPac Securities Corp (
"Asrock will gain a new driving force after tapping into middle-range and high-end products, which account for 60 percent of the total unit sales of the motherboard industry," SinoPac Securities said in the report published on Monday.
Asrock plans to produce 10 percent to 15 percent more motherboards next year from this year's goal of 7 million units, based on replacement demand for the Vista system and rising demand in the emerging markets, chairman Ted Hsu (
In the first nine months of the year, Asrock's earnings inched up by nearly 4 percent to NT$1.39 billion, compared to NT$1.34 billion a year ago.
On Tuesday it said it had raised NT$2.86 billion by issuing 11.44 million new common shares during the initial public offering. Asrock now has around 102 million shares in issue.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of