TAIEX climbs 1.63 percent
Share prices closed up 1.63 percent yesterday as investors hailed improving US jobs data, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 124.73 points to 7,775.64 on turnover of NT$134.91 billion (US$4.19 billion).
The market opened 0.70 percent higher, vaulting the index past resistance at 7,700 points, and the momentum of large-cap stocks continued until the end of the session on optimism towards the global economic climate, dealers said.
Investors also shrugged off a setback suffered by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in Saturday’s local elections, they said.
“The election outcome had been expected by the market. The end of the vote cleared uncertainty,” Grand Cathay Securities (大華證券) analyst Mars Hsu said.
Institutional investors picked up large-cap high-tech stocks on hopes of growing global demand, dealers said.
“The buying into the bellwether electronic sector showed investors have shifted their attention back to economic fundamentals after the elections,” Hsu said.
Hon Hai targets Quanta laptops
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest contract maker of electronics, plans to buy Quanta Computer Inc’s (廣達電腦) laptop unit, the United Evening News reported on Sunday without saying where it got the information from.
The companies denied the report, the Chinese-language newspaper said. Quanta’s spokeswoman Carol Hsu (許昭瑾) denied the rumor and Hon Hai spokesman Edmund Ding (丁祈安) didn’t return calls seeking comment.
Meanwhile, SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) said it has no intentions or plans to acquire Bank International Ningbo (寧波銀行) in China, the Taipei-based lender said in an exchange filing yesterday.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported SinoPac Financial aims to acquire a 51 percent stake in the Chinese bank for NT$6 billion, citing unidentified people familiar with the plan.
Formosa invests in Nanya
Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan’s biggest diversified industrial company, invested a total of NT$5.42 billion in group member Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) through three affiliates, their exchange statements said yesterday.
Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp (台灣化纖) invested NT$781 million, Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) bought NT$764 million shares, while Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) invested NT$3.87 billion. They paid NT$20 apiece for Nanya Technology’s shares.
Nanya Technology, Taiwan’s biggest maker of computer-memory chips, rose by its daily limit to close at NT$23.90 on the TAIEX yesterday, before the announcement.
Wealthy investors get richer
About 70 percent of affluent Chinese investors say they became wealthier during the last six months, helped by the global stock market rally, a survey conducted by Nielsen showed.
The number of Chinese respondents in the survey who reported an increase in their net worth climbed from 46 percent in June, said Bonnie Tse, the Hong Kong-based head of wealth management for Asia Pacific at HSBC Holdings PLC, which commissioned the survey.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index has rallied 71 percent from a five-year low on March 9 after governments worldwide cut interest rates and pledged more than US$2 trillion in stimulus since September last year.
In India, the percentage of affluent respondents who said their wealth rose climbed to 68 percent from 28 percent six months ago.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by