The New Taiwan dollar declined by the most in more than a week on concern the global economic slowdown will cut demand for Taiwan’s electronics exports. Bonds rose.
The currency fell against the US dollar as a report last week showed exports fell 8.3 percent last month from a year earlier, the biggest drop in more than three years, on weaker demand from China.
“The market is consolidating holdings for the time being, both in stocks and currencies,” said Irene Cheung, a corporate director for local-markets trading at ABN Amro Bank NV in Singapore. “There will be further downside in the Taiwan dollar. The market is looking at the real problems that the economy is facing.”
The currency fell 0.2 percent to NT$32.874 as of the 4pm close, Taipei Forex Inc said. It earlier touched NT$32.898.
The government might help chipmakers with short-term financing, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported on Monday, citing Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥).
Taiwan’s 10-year bonds rose on speculation the central bank will cut interest rates.
Ten-year bond yields fell to the lowest since January 2006 after the central bank cut interest rates for the fourth time in seven weeks on Friday and said “the risk of an economic slowdown has risen.”
“Bonds are in a long-term bull market,” said Sam Chang, a debt trader at Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券) in Taipei. “The central bank will probably keep cutting interest rates.”
The yield on the benchmark 2.125 percent bond maturing September 2018 declined 7.7 basis points to 1.743 percent as of the 1:30pm close in Taipei, the GRETAI Securities Market said.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six