Tourism, property boost TAIEX
Taiwanese share prices closed 1.72 percent higher yesterday, bolstered by tourism and property shares on hopes of an increase in Chinese tourist arrivals and that closer ties between Taiwan and China would give a boost to the industries.
The weighted TAIEX index advanced 99.75 points to close at 5,881.41. A total of 5.74 billion shares changed hands on market turnover of NT$122.43 billion (US$3.62 billion).
All eight major stock categories gained ground, with construction stocks moving up the most at 5.7 percent.
ProMOS still looking for loans
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), the nation’s No. 3 manufacturer of computer memory chips, said yesterday it is still in talks with credit banks to grant it NT$3 billion in loans to repay outstanding corporate bonds and hoped to draw on the loans to repay outstanding bonds.
“We have cleared most problems with credit banks and we think one week should be a reasonable timeframe,” ProMOS spokesman Ben Tseng (曾邦助) said by phone.
The Hsinchu-based chipmaker failed to meet the April 17 transaction deadline after extending the settlement of its discounted tender offer from April 3.
The state-controlled Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), ProMOS’ biggest credit bank, said “credit banks are still negotiating with ProMOS to settle some disputes,” spokesman Tsai Fu-thi (蔡富吉) said by telephone.
Energy-saving plan launched
On the eve of Earth Day, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday launched an energy-saving campaign calling on the public to turn off electric appliances when they are not in use.
The government estimates that switching off the six most commonly used home and office appliances — copy machines, printers, office water dispensers, drinking fountains, home electric water cookers and computers — can bring about savings equivalent to the amount of energy used annually by 950,000 households and can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2.26 million tonnes per year, MOEA Vice Minister Huang Jung-chiou (黃重球) said.
China Steel sells shares
China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation’s largest and only integrated steelmaker, said yesterday it sold shares in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for a profit of NT$374.25 million.
The Kaohsiung-based company said in a statement it sold 10 million TSMC shares from April 16 until Monday, for a total of NT$514.54 million.
The steelmaker plans to reduce production further by carrying out annual maintenance on another furnace at the end of this year, after it recently shut a furnace and cut production by 30 percent, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing company president Chen Yuan-cheng (陳源成).
Mega to halt bank acquisition
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), Taiwan’s third-largest publicly traded financial company, plans to halt a plan to acquire Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀), the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday, citing unnamed Mega officials.
The report cited economic conditions and union disapproval as reasons behind the decision. It said Mega Financial planned to sell its 13 percent stake in Taiwan Business Bank when the lender’s share price rises.
NT dollar edges down
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.030 to close at NT$33.860. Turnover was US$753 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
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