Electronics boost TAIEX
Share prices closed up 2.48 percent yesterday on strong buying in the bellwether electronics sector, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 108 points to 4,471.25 on turnover of NT$71.81 billion (US$2.13 billion).
Gainers led losers 1,184 to 396 with 210 stocks unchanged.
The market opened up 1.72 percent and the momentum continued until the end of the day as investors took cues from Wall Street’s gains overnight, in particular, a strong performance staged by US high tech stocks, dealers said.
The NASDAQ defied pessimism over the global economy to rally, giving investors high hopes of improving fundamentals in the second quarter, Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Allen Huang said yesterday.
“Technically speaking, the [high-tech] sector had been oversold before the Lunar New Year holiday. It is time for institutional investors to rebuild positions,” he said.
“As the market is full of liquidity, the market upside is very likely to continue, although the bourse has to jump over resistance around 4,500 points,” he said.
Fitch reaffirms banks’ ratings
Fitch Ratings affirmed its “stable” outlook ratings on five Taiwanese banks yesterday, but warned the economic slump might have negative impact on the nation’s financial institutions this year.
The five banks were Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀), Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀), Cosmos Bank (萬泰銀行) and Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行).
Fitch said in a statement that the overall banking sector is likely to incur net losses this year.
The ratings agency cited “ongoing margin compression on the back of extremely low interest rates, an anticipated increase in credit costs and anemic fee income” as reasons behind the losses for this year.
Elphida seeking US$493m
Elpida Memory Inc, Japan’s largest maker of computer-memory chips, needs as much as ¥45 billion (US$493 million) to help weather a demand slump that has forced all major producers to report losses.
“We are looking for about ¥40 billion to ¥45 billion,” president Yukio Sakamoto said yesterday.
The Tokyo-based company would welcome Japanese public funds or an investment by Taiwan, where its Rexchip Electronics Co (瑞晶電子) is based, he said.
Elpida jointly owns Rexchip with Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), Taiwan’s largest computer-memory maker.
MOEA offers construction plan
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) was scheduled to submit a public infrastructure construction program package to the Executive Yuan yesterday that is expected to create 5,000 jobs and secure 90,000 existing ones, a ministry official said.
The package, which covers eight medium and small construction and renewal projects, is aimed at helping revive the sagging economy and curbing the soaring unemployment rate, the official said.
The ministry plans to allocate a public affairs budget of NT$9.62 billion and a special budget of NT$17.75 billion to fund the projects, which are scheduled to be implemented over the next two years, the official said.
The package includes four projects by the Industrial Development Bureau to rejuvenate old industrial zones, the official said.
NT dollar slips
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.045 to close at NT$33.750.
Turnover was US$744 million.
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