TAIEX sheds 12 points
Taiwan shares closed 0.17 percent lower yesterday on mixed signals for different sectors, dealers said.
The weighted index dropped 12.25 points to 7,322.93 on turnover of NT$79.13 billion (US$2.43 billion).
However, gainers outnumbered losers 1,388 to 1,035, while 295 stocks remained unchanged.
A total of 25 shares surged to their daily 7 percent limit, against 18 limit-down.
“While investors were reluctant to build up their portfolio, they did not want to dump their shares at low levels,” said Chen Yu-yu (陳育娛) of Capital Securities (群益證券).
Allianz bullish on Taiwan
Taiwanese stocks will offer one of the best returns in Asia next year as corporate earnings improve with warming cross-strait relations, Allianz SE said.
The signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China could help Taiwanese companies expand beyond their home market, boosting the outlook for profits, said Nikhil Srinivasan, who oversees about US$25 billion as Singapore-based chief investment officer for Asia and the Middle East at Europe’s biggest insurer.
“Taiwan is a buy story as the economic and commercial assumptions from cross-strait ties are positive for the market,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Once the agreement is signed, there’s going to be a re-rating on Taiwanese stocks in terms of price-earnings multiple over the next 12 months,” Srinivasan said.
Credit bad loan ratio improves
The nation’s credit card bad-loan ratio improved slightly in September, declining to 1.09 percent from the previous month’s 1.21 percent, statistics released by the Financial Supervisory Commission showed yesterday.
A total of 31.24 million credit cards from 38 issuers were in circulation as of the end of September, with revolving credit loans amounting to NT$216.4 billion, and cash-advance loans totaling NT$116.4 billion.
Thirty-seven card issuers imposed a bad loan ratio of below 3 percent, but Chinfon Commercial Bank’s (慶豐銀行) bad loan ratio was 5.69 percent in September, the commission said.
The nation’s cash card bad loan ratio also declined to 2.628 percent in September from the previous month’s 2.782 percent, the commission said.
About 940,000 cash cards issued by 18 banks were in effect in September, with total lending reaching NT$70.2 billion, the data showed.
Of the 18 issuers, DBS Group Holdings Ltd (星展銀行), Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行) and Chinfon had a bad loan ratio of 3.792 percent, 19.766 percent and 30.84 percent respectively, it said.
LG to set up LCD fab in China
South Korea’s LG Display said yesterday it had signed an agreement to help set up a US$4 billion fab to make liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels in southeast China.
The company, the world’s second-largest flat panel maker, said production from the plant in Guangzhou would begin in 2012 to meet growing demand for one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for flat-screen televisions.
A joint venture will be set up, with LG owning 70 percent and the remainder held by Guangzhou and a Chinese LCD TV maker.
NT dollar retreats
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.022 to close at NT$32.575. Turnover was US$907 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