Shares largely flat
Shares were largely flat yesterday, with a rebound in construction issues offset by losses in the broad electronics sector.
The TAIEX rose 3.01 points, or 0.04 percent, to finish at 7,215.88, as investors seemed to be playing their hands conservatively with only two trading sessions left before the Lunar New Year break.
The local bourse lost 5.6 percent last week, the biggest weekly drop since last August.
A total of 3.03 billion shares changed hands on market turnover of NT$83.95 billion (US$2.61 billion).
Foreign investors and Chinese QDIIs were net sellers of NT$15.72 billion in shares. The last session in which they were net buyers of shares was on Jan. 21.
Five of eight major stock categories gained ground, with construction issues the biggest gainers, rising by 3 percent.
Hua Nan admits exposure
Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) said it had NT$1 billion exposure in Spain and Greece, parent Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控) said in statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
In a separate statement, Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行) said it had NT$1.2 billion exposure in Italy, Greece and Spain.
On Saturday, the Financial Supervisory Commission said Taiwanese financial institutions had a combined NT$33.78 billion in investment linked to government agencies and companies in Greece, Spain and Portugal, amid default fears about these countries.
Amtran sales fall 7.21 percent
Amtran Technology Co Ltd (瑞軒科技), which supplies flat-panel TVs to US vendor Vizio Inc, said sales fell 7.21 percent to NT$4.25 billion last month from NT$4.58 billion a year earlier, primarily because of short supply of key components.
Last month’s sales represented a decline of about 29.17 from NT$6 billion in the previous month.
Amtran said it was optimistic about this year’s revenues outlook and expected sales to increase after receiving increasing supply of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels.
TSMC buys equipment
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest custom-chip maker, bought NT$572 million of equipment from Applied Materials South East Asia Pacific Ltd, the Hsinchu-based company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
Samsung, Sharp call truce
Sharp Corp and Samsung Electronics Co agreed to put an end to all patent-infringement litigation against each other and cross-license technology related to LCDs.
Samsung, the world’s largest LCD maker, and Sharp will drop all pending lawsuits and share patents on LCD panels and modules, the two companies said in separate statements yesterday. Financial details weren’t disclosed.
The agreement ends more than two years of disputes between Samsung and Sharp, Japan’s largest LCD maker, over patented technology for LCD TVs.
Nokia to cut jobs in Finland
Nokia Oyj, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, plans to cut more than 10 percent of the jobs at its only Finnish handset factory as the company revamps to produce new smartphones.
“The reduction need is 285 and the exact number and the packages are being negotiated,” Arja Suominen, a spokeswoman, said by telephone.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.011 to close at NT$32.195. A total of US$744 million changed hands during the day’s trading.
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