Taiwan shares close up
Taiwan share prices closed 2.03 percent higher yesterday after the last session before the long Lunar New Year trading break, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed up 152.86 points at 7,673.99, having traded in a range of 7,583.65 to 7,706.03, on turnover of NT$123.10 billion (US$3.85 billion).
Risers led decliners 1,485 to 418, while 376 stocks remained unchanged.
Alex Huang (
"Thanks to the upswing in the local currency following the US Fed's aggressive cuts in interest rates, investors were willing to raise their equity portfolios in anticipation of capital inflows to the island," Huang said.
Lunar New Year is the time when companies pay annual bonuses to staff, so the Taipei bourse could attract buyers when traders return to work on Feb. 12, he said.
UPS announces extended hours
United Parcel Service (UPS) announced an extension of its service hours on Monday and Tuesday to provide delivery for customers who are struggling to cope with tight shipping deadlines ahead of the coming Lunar New Year festivities.
All of its service centers across the country will extend services by one to two hours on these two days.
In addition, UPS also introduces a new shipping packaging combination this year to guarantee the same express courier service for heavy packages with small parcels.
Customers can also make appointments before noon on Tuesday to get their parcels on the following day, which is Lunar New Year's Eve.
Macronix reports big profits
Macronix International Co (
The Hsinchu-based firm, which produces so-called ROM products and NOR flash memory chips for clients, said last year's profits were up 128.81 percent from 2006, when the company reported NT$2.03 billion profits, or NT$0.7 a share.
Profit in the fourth quarter reached NT$1.24 billion, a five-year high for the same quarter during the last five years, the company said. Earnings per share were NT$0.41 in the three months ended December, down from NT$0.69 in the previous quarter and NT$0.46 a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
For the first-quarter outlook, president Lu Chih-yuan (
Taiwan drawn into EU probe
The EU's threat of tariffs on steel from China has been extended to Taiwan and South Korea, with a new probe into cheap imports that compete against EU producers including ThyssenKrupp AG.
The inquiry is into whether Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean exporters sell stainless steel in the 27-nation EU below cost, a practice known as dumping. It covers 2.1 billion euros (US$3.1 billion) in imports of cold-rolled flat products, used in everything from tanks to boilers and kitchen equipment.
The commission has nine months to decide whether to impose provisional anti-dumping duties for half a year and EU governments have 15 months to choose whether to apply "definitive" levies for five years.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the