Shares close 0.55% higher
Share prices recovered from an early plunge yesterday to close up 0.55 percent ahead of the arrival of Chinese tourists, dealers said.
The weighted index closed up 40.24 points, or 0.55 percent, at 7,394.10 on an expanded turnover of NT$120.8 billion (US$3.97 billion).
The tourism sector rose 6.87 percent, the paper sector was up 4.47 percent, construction up 4.38 percent, transport up 3.66 percent and electronics up 0.76 percent.
A total of 141 stocks closed limit-up, while 34 were limit-down.
Powerchip to buy back shares
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s largest memory-chip maker, said yesterday it may spend as much as NT$15.6 billion to buy back 110 million shares.
Powerchip plans to purchase the shares at between NT$8.50 and NT$16.85 each, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The buyback will start today and end on Sept. 3. The stock rose 1 percent to close at NT$9.20 before the announcement.
In a separate statement to the exchange, Powerchip, based in Hsinchu, said it planned to invest an extra NT$5.5 billion in Rexchip Electronics Co (瑞晶), its venture with Elpida Memory Inc.
Rexchip plans to raise the funds in a rights issue in the first quarter of next year, the statement said.
Tokyo-based Elpida and Powerchip announced the US$15 billion memory-chip venture in December 2006.
Server shipments drop 12.8%
Shipments of x86 servers by domestic companies were 17,478 units for the first three months of the year, marking a 12.8 percent drop from the previous quarter, market research firm IDC said.
However, the figure also represented a 2.8 percent rise year-on-year, IDC said.
IDC Taiwan said the drop from the previous quarter may be the result of rising oil prices, the March presidential election and seasonal weakness.
Shipments of x86 blade servers for the January to March period dropped 29.9 percent over the previous quarter, but increased year-on-year.
Taipower tree pledge succeeds
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) has secured permission from the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to expand one of its power plants after pledging to plant 1 million trees.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday that the EPA approved Taipower’s plan to expand its coal-fired power plant in Linkou Township (林口), Taipei County, after Taipower promised to plant trees to compensate for increased green house emissions.
In its report to the EPA, Taipower detailed short, mid and long-term measures for environmental protection and pledged to cut greenhouse emissions by 2020 to this year’s level.
The state-run Taipower plans to install three more generators at the Linkou Power Plant to boost the plant’s capacity from 1 million kilowatts to 2.48 million kilowatts.
Taipower will invite tenders from international companies for the generators, a project worth about US$4.8 billion. The first generator is scheduled to go into operation in 2013, the newspaper said.
NT dollar closes lower
The NT dollar dropped against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.018 to close at NT$30.390.
A total of US$1.256 billion changed hands during the day’s trading.
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