TAIEX down 0.2 percent
Taiwanese shares closed 0.2 percent lower yesterday as technology stocks remained weak ahead of key first-quarter earnings reports to be released next week, dealers said.
The weighted index closed down 18.16 points at 8,990.33, off a high of 9,064.15 and low of 8,974.79. Turnover was NT$149.60 billion (US$4.94 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 1,395 to 906, while 335 stocks were unchanged. A total of 15 stocks closed limit-up, while 10 were limit-down.
Bruce Yu, a fund manager with Jih Sun Securities Investment Consulting Co (日盛投顧), said technology stocks were under pressure as investors were “waiting for more first-quarter earnings results.”
NPL ratio drops 0.1 percent
The Taiwanese banking sector’s asset quality inched up with its non-performing loan (NPL) ratio dropping 0.1 percentage points month-on-month to 1.69 percent last month, Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed yesterday.
The nation’s 38 banks had a total of NT$302 billion in bad loans by the end of last month — a fall of NT$17.9 billion from February, the commission’s data showed.
Twenty-seven of the 38 domestic banks maintained an NPL ratio of less than 2.5 percent and the ratio for another six banks ranged between 2.5 percent and 5 percent.
The remaining three banks including the worst-performing Chinfon Bank (慶豐銀行), which reported the highest NPL ratio of 26.41 percent at the end of last month, had a much higher bad loan ratio, data showed.
The sector’s NPL ratio among unsecured credit card borrowers also declined by 0.07 percentage point to 6.15 percent last month for the ninth consecutive month.
However, the sector’s NPL ratio among cash card borrowers slightly climbed by 0.04 percentage point to 1.94 percent last month.
Shanghai stocks up 9 pecent
Shanghai stocks jumped more than 9 percent yesterday, their biggest gain in more than six years, after the Chinese government cut the tax on equity trading, Xinhua news agency reported.
The government stepped in to revive the stock market two days after the benchmark index sank to less than 50 percent of its October peak.
The Chinese government announced on Wednesday it would cut the share trading stamp tax from 0.3 percent to 0.1 percent to boost the equities market.
The Shanghai Composite index surged 9.29 percent to end at 3,583.03 points.
The Shenzhen Composite index gained 8.7 per cent to close at 1,043.80 points.
KTV merger blocked
The Fair Trade Commission yesterday rejected the planned merger of Cash Box KTV (錢櫃) — the nation’s biggest karaoke chain — and Holiday Entertainment Co (好樂迪娛樂事業) — the second-biggest — in a bid to avoid a monopoly.
The commission said the two chains’ combined market share exceeded 51 percent in Taiwan at the end of 2006, which it said would limit competition if the merger were approved.
The two chains had earlier promised that they would not raise their prices for five years following the merger.
NT drops against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar continued weakening against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.004 to close at NT$30.297.
A total of US$1.328 billion changed hands during day trading.
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],”
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
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