TAIEX bounces back slightly
Share prices staged a technical rebound yesterday from heavy losses during the previous session, closing up 1.14 percent following an overnight recovery on Wall Street, according to dealers.
The TAIEX closed up 80.98 points at 7,167.35 on turnover of NT$98.88 billion (US$3.06 billion).
“Despite the gains, market sentiment remained very cautious, with many investors remaining on the sidelines. The willingness to chase prices was low,” Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said, referring to the thin turnover.
“It is possible that the local market will test the key support level of 7,000 points if Wall Street suffers volatility amid weak sentiment,” Huang said.
Tainan solar station planned
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) plans to build the nation’s biggest solar power station in Tainan County as the government aims to reduce carbon emissions.
The proposed 5 megawatt plant will surpass a 4.6MW facility being constructed in Kaohsiung County, Taipower chief engineer Tu Yueh-yuan (杜悅元) said yesterday.
Taipower is negotiating with state-run Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar, 台糖), which owns the land for the proposed site, Tu said.
Taipower plans to build another solar power station, with installed capacity of 4MW, on Taisugar-owned land in Tainan, she said.
A-DATA receives loan
A-DATA Technology Co (威剛科技) announced yesterday it received a three-year loan of NT$3.6 billion from a group of 11 banks, according to a stock exchange filing.
The syndicated loan was jointly led by Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) and Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), the filing said. The world’s second-largest memory module brand would use the loans to boost its medium-term working capital and expand its overseas operations, according to the filing.
Shin Kong Life venture expands
Shin Kong Life Insurance Co’s (新光人壽) venture with China’s HNA Group (中國海航集團) received approval from Chinese authorities to set up a branch in Haikou, Hainan Province, parent Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) said in a statement yesterday.
The China Insurance Regulatory Commission agreed to Shin Kong-HNA Life Insurance Co’s (新光海航人壽保險) Haikou branch application on Monday, the statement said.
ASE plant nears completion
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s biggest semiconductor tester and packager, plans to complete construction of its new plant in Kaohsiung in August next year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Tuesday. ASE plans to hire 7,500 workers for the new plant, according to the statement.
HTC to invest in Chinese units
HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s leading maker of smartphones running on Windows Mobile and Android platforms, said on Tuesday it would invest a total of US$64.5 million in two subsidiaries in China.
HTC said in a stock exchange filing that its board agreed to inject US$45 million into HTC Electronics (Shanghai) Co (威宏電子) and invest US$19.5 million in HTC Communications Co (宏達通訊).
The two subsidiaries, which have paid-in capital of between US$55.9 million and US$8 million respectively, will use the new funds to boost their working capital and meet their operational needs, the filings said.
NT dollar gains NT$0.04
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground yesterday, rising NT$0.04 against the US dollar to close at NT$32.345.
Turnover was US$815 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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts