Shares rise on cautious trade
Share prices closed 1.56 percent higher yesterday on bargain hunting after recent heavy losses, but thin trading volume indicated caution amid inflation fears, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 112.7 points to 7,341.11, off a low of 7,179.24 and a high of 7,343.63, on turnover of NT$73.88 billion (US$2.43 billion).
Following a fall of more than 16 percent since the end of May, most stocks looked attractive in valuations, with market heavyweights such as financials, cements and petrochemicals in focus, dealers said.
“Valuations after recent steep declines were not able to reflect profitability of these large cap stocks. They seemed to have been oversold,” Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
Huang said he suspected buying came largely from major shareholders of these leading stocks to boost investor confidence amid market turbulence at home and abroad. A trader with a foreign brokerage said that government-controlled funds also played a role behind the gains.
However, Huang said daily turnover was low, indicating many investors remained sidelined because of concern over rising oil prices.
“They are watching closely when foreign institutional investors will resume buying after the massive selling,” he said.
New models boost HTC profit
High Tech Computer Corp (HTC, 宏達電), the world’s largest maker of handsets using Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system, posted a 7 percent increase in second-quarter profit after releasing new models.
Its net income climbed to NT$6.44 billion (US$212 million), or NT$8.52 a share, from NT$6 billion, or NT$10.43, a year earlier, the Taoyuan-based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. HTC was expected to post a profit of NT$6.5 billion, according to the average of nine analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
CAL chairman resigns
China Airlines (CAL, 中華航空) chairman Ringo Chao (趙國帥) tendered his resignation yesterday.
Sources say that Chao wrote in the letter he intended to terminate his responsibilities at the airline with immediate effect.
Company spokesman Bruce Chen (陳鵬宇) said it was Chao’s personal decision to resign.
“Chao feels that he has completed his duties with the initiation of cross-strait charter flights. This was the goal he set for himself at China Airlines. And at the completion of this task, he feels that it is time for him to leave,” Chen said.
Envoy hopes for direct flights
Taiwanese authorities are hoping to see the start of direct flights between Taiwan and Israel to meet the growing demand driven by an increasing number of visitors and expanded business activities, Taiwanese Representative to Israel Terry Ting (丁干城) said on Sunday.
Ting said Taiwanese had made more than 6,000 visits to Israel during the first half of this year, up 118 percent from a year ago.
Meanwhile, Israelis made more than 2,000 visits to Taiwan during the same period, Ting said, adding that the total number of bilateral visits could exceed 10,000 by the end of this year.
Economic exchanges between the two countries have also expanded in recent years, with bilateral trade reaching US$1.3 billion in 2006, increasing to US$1.3 billion last year and projected to rise to US$1.4 billion next year, Ting said.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained NT$0.002 to close at NT$30.399 against the US dollar on turnover of US$856 million 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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained