Shares climb 0.97 percent
Taiwanese share prices closed up 0.97 percent yesterday amid continuing foreign fund inflows and warming cross-strait business ties, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 63.63 points to 6,647.50 on turnover of NT$189.61 billion (US$5.76 billion).
The market opened slightly lower on mild profit taking, but buying sentiment emerged during the day to recoup the losses as foreign investors kept moving money into the bourse, dealers said.
“Foreign institutional investors still stood on the buy-side despite the market’s recent strong showing,” President Securities (統一證券) analyst Johnny Lee said. “They need to build up their portfolios and catch up with the broader market’s upside.”
Lee said a stronger New Taiwan dollar indicated the local bourse remained attractive to foreign investors, adding foreign buying helped to shrug off worries over a possible major pullback following a 9.86 percent rise last week.
Financial heavyweights led the gains on expectations that Taiwan and China will soon sign a memorandum of understanding for increasing banking exchanges.
“I expect buying in the financial sector will continue. That may help the market to challenge 7,000 points,” Lee said.
TSMC may invest in solar
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest custom-chip maker, said it may invest in alternative energy as it looks for new long-term growth industries.
“We are looking at some opportunities, including solar, but I cannot elaborate more,” Tzeng Jinn-haw (曾晉皓), spokesman for the Hsinchu-based company, said in a phone interview, confirming a Financial Times report yesterday that cited chief executive Rick Tsai (蔡力行). “We’re not only eying the green sector, we’re eying several others,” but Tsai did not name them.
TSMC is considering diversifying away from chips to combat declining industry margins, the Times reported on its Web site, citing Tsai. Tzeng said yesterday he didn’t know when the company would make a decision on such investments.
Meanwhile, TSMC chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that seeing a rally, it was still too early to say an economic recovery has arrived in Taiwan. Such a recovery will depend on how soon US and European economies rebound, he said.
The stock declined 1.1 percent to NT$55.70 as of 11:56am yesterday in Taipei, compared with a 0.6 percent advance by the benchmark TAIEX index.
Chunghwa posts April income
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s largest phone operator, posted net income of NT$3.9 billion (US$119 million), or NT$0.40 per share, for last month on sales of NT$15.1 billion, it said in an exchange filing yesterday, without giving comparative figures.
In the first four months of this year, net income was NT$14.7 billion on sales of NT$60.3 billion, the statement said.
Deal will go through: Hsu
Far EasTone Telecommunications Ltd (遠傳) expects the sale of a 12 percent stake to China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) to be approved even though there are no regulations that allow this to happen, its chairman said.
“It cannot go through because there’s no law right at this moment,” Douglas Hsu (徐旭東), chairman of Taipei-based Far EasTone said yesterday in Taipei.
When the deal is completed “doesn’t matter, it will go through at some time,” Hsu said, declining to comment on a timeframe.
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