Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) rose to its highest in almost four years in Taipei trading after Bear Stearns Cos rated it "outperform" and Goldman Sachs Group Inc raised its price target on the stock.
Fubon, Taiwan's second-largest financial services company by market value, gained 2.9 percent to close at NT$35.50, the highest since March 11, 2004. The benchmark TAIEX added 1 percent.
The group should sustain 10 percent income growth from loans and 15 percent from net fee income this year and next, Bear Stearns wrote in a report on Thursday, when it initiated coverage on the company.
Fubon will "benefit from robust loan growth, strong wealth management and life insurance business, and a sharp rise in Fubon Bank [Hong Kong]'s net profit," the report said.
Bear Stearns analysts Francis Chan (陳永富), Steven Chan (陳昔典) and Jim Antos have a 12-month target price of NT$41.20 on the stock.
Goldman's Vincent Chang (
Cathay Financial Holding Co (
Taiwan's financial stocks will rise another 15 to 20 percent in the next three months as investors buy shares on optimism the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) landslide victory in parliamentary elections will lead to an easing of curbs on investment in China, UBS said.
"We think the rally is only halfway through," Pandora Lee (李懿璇), an analyst at UBS wrote in the report dated yesterday. "Too early to sell and not too late to buy."
Cathay Financial added NT$1.70, or 2.1 percent, to NT$83.50. Lee raised the brokerage's share-price forecast for the stock to NT$96.30 from NT$88, citing lower-than-estimated writedowns in investments related to the US housing market.
Yuanta Financial Holding Co (
The company's share-price forecast was raised to NT$29 from NT$22.10 while the recommendation was lifted to "buy" from "neutral" by Goldman's Chang, according to a report dated yesterday.
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],”
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
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