Shares gain on Wall Street rally
Share prices closed up 0.49 percent yesterday led by cement and construction shares, following Wall Street’s overnight rally, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 34.55 points to 7,069.51 on turnover of NT$124.52 billion (US$3.89 billion).
Gainers led losers 1,243 to 1,118 with 192 stocks unchanged.
“Reconstruction efforts [in the wake of Typhoon Morakot] are a must and investors see a tangible benefit” to construction and cement stocks, said Andrew Teng of Taiwan International Securities.
Both sectors were boosted after the government announced it was planning a special budget of NT$70 billion for post-typhoon reconstruction.
No change to fuel prices
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday it will keep its gasoline and diesel prices unchanged next week due to the widespread devastation brought by Morakot.
On Thursday, state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said its fuel prices would not changed next week.
Telecom cables restored
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co said its mobile phone and Internet services are operating normally after cables damaged by Morakot were repaired.
Network capacity on international calls and broadband services have been fully restored, Philippine Long Distance and unit Smart Communications Inc said in separate statements yesterday.
Damaged undersea cables in systems that pass through Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore disrupted services, the company said on Wednesday.
TSMC buying equipment
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the largest maker of chips designed by other companies, has bought NT$564 million of equipment from Tokyo Electron Ltd, the company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
The announcement came after the Hsinchu-based company bought NT$1.3 billion of equipment from Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co earlier this month and NT$708 million of gear from Verigy Ltd. It has also acquired machinery worth NT$1 billion from Japan’s Tokyo Electron Ltd, NT$630.9 million worth of gear from Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc and bought NT$2.45 billion worth of equipment from ASML Hong Kong Ltd.
Delta Electronics hiring
Delta Electronics (Thailand) Pcl, a Thai unit of Taiwan’s Delta Electronics Inc (台達電), expects profit to increase in the second half of the year from the first six months as it hires more employees to meet rising demand.
Delta is also “finalizing” plans to acquire two companies in the electronics sector in the US and Europe this year, executive director Anusorn Muttaraid said yesterday in Bangkok. He didn’t elaborate on the proposed acquisitions.
“The second quarter was the worst for us,” he said.
Sales and profit will improve in the third and fourth quarters as “orders have picked up,” he said.
The Bangkok-based company’s profit slumped 52 percent in the second quarter to 300.9 million baht (US$8.8 million) from a year earlier, the company said in a filing to the Thai stock exchange
The company cut its forecast for sales this year to US$900 million from a previous target of US$1.1 billion, Anusorn said.
NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.003 to close at NT$32.895. Turnover was US$486 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