TAIEX down 0.3 percent
Taiwanese shares closed down 0.3 percent on profit-taking yesterday following a surge during the previous session, dealers said.
The weighted index closed down 20.02 points at 7,065.65, off a low of 6,998.13 and high of 7,098.68 on turnover of NT$88.52 billion (US$2.91 billion).
Advancers and decliners were even at 1,017, while 471 stocks were unchanged. A total of 28 stocks closed limit-up, while 31 were limit-down.
“Investors locked in profits after yesterday’s rally, but the sentiment has started to change, becoming a bit bullish if compared with pessimism prevailing in the market over the past few weeks,” said Michael Hsu (�?@) from Taiwan Life Asset Management (台壽保投信).
“Except notebook-related companies, most electronic industries are facing uncertainty regarding their outlook in the third and fourth quarter,” he said.
Hannstar inks Hitachi deal
Hannstar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶), the nation’s fourth-largest maker of liquid-crystal displays (LCD), extended a patent agreement with Japan’s Hitachi Displays Ltd for the design of screens used in LCD monitors and TVs.
Hannstar and Hitachi Displays, a wholly owned unit of Hitachi Ltd, signed the six-year contract on cross licensing of LCD patents yesterday, Hannstar said in a filing to the stock exchange. The Taoyuan-based company did not disclose financial terms.
The agreement has been backdated to Jan. 1 and will last until the end of 2012, the statement said. Hitachi and Hannstar said in November 2002 they will share patents that will last through June.
Hannstar also has an LCD patent agreement with Sharp Corp.
Taipower sells bonds
State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) sold NT$9.5 billion in bonds to help fund new generators and transmission lines.
Taipower sold NT$2.55 billion in three-year notes, NT$3.9 billion in five-year bonds and NT$3.05 billion in seven-year debt, the utility said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
Taipower could sell as much as NT$80 billion of bonds this year to help fund spending of about NT$160 billion on power plants and networks this year, company spokesman Clint Chou (周義岳) said.
Including yesterday’s transactions, the company has sold NT$40.5 billion in debt since the start of this year, Chou said.
The utility has an Aaa.tw rating from Moody’s Investors Service, the highest for any Taiwanese company from the US credit rating firm.
CCP to look at economy
China’s political elite will meet this week to discuss key economic policy for the rest of the year amid concerns over slowing growth, high inflation and weak exports, a report said yesterday.
The gathering of the key Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politburo will follow visits by top leaders to the country’s main economic strongholds and export bases in recent weeks, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unnamed sources.
“Their missions to related regions were urgently planned to prepare them with first-hand information on the latest developments in the economic powerhouses,” a government economist was quoted as saying.
China’s economy grew 10.1 percent in the second quarter, down from 10.6 percent in the first quarter, figures released last week showed.
NT drops against greenback
The NT dollar dropped NT$0.018 to close at NT$30.381 against the US dollar on the Taipei Forex Inc yesterday.
Turnover was US$696 million, up from US$686 million the previous day.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts