TAIEX follows Wall Street rise
The TAIEX closed up 1.23 percent yesterday in line with other regional markets after an upbeat mood about corporate earnings sparked a rally on Wall Street overnight, dealers said.
The index rose 94.88 points to 7,761.22, after moving between 7,739.04 and 7,782.02, on turnover of NT$122.80 billion (US$3.82 billion).
The market opened up 1.04 percent and extended the gains until the end of the trading session, with buying focusing on large-cap high-tech stocks as market sentiment was boosted by Wall Street’s strong showing, dealers said.
A total of 2,343 stocks closed up and 1,031 down, with 316 remaining unchanged.
Debt level might not rise
Taiwan’s economic recovery will boost tax revenue, which means that the nation’s debt level might not rise next year, the government said yesterday.
However, Taiwan’s debt may increase NT$400 billion (US$12.5 billion) next year because of a tax cut, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday.
The estimate is “incorrect,” National Treasury Agency Director-General Hwang Ding-fang (黃定方), said in an interview.
“The government hasn’t finalized its spending and income estimates for next year,” Hwang said. “The economic recovery will help boost tax revenue.”
Amtran to expand into LED
Amtran Technology Co Ltd (瑞軒科技), which makes flat-panel TVs for other companies, primarily US TV maker Vizio Inc, yesterday said it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with South Korean LCD panel maker LG Display Co to expand their cooperation to high-end LED monitor manufacturing business, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
In September 2008, Amtran formed a Chinese LCD TV venture, Suzhou Raken Technology Ltd (樂軒), with LG Display with an initial investment totaled US$48 million.
The latest MOU would add LED monitors to Raken’s lineup, a company official from Amtran said on the condition of anonymity.
U-Ming Marine’s profits surge
U-Ming Marine Transport Corp (裕民航運), a member of the Far Eastern Group (遠東集團), announced yesterday it made a pre-tax profit of NT$4.21 billion in the first half of the year, or NT$4.91 per share, according to a company filing.
That was compared with NT$2.9 billion in pre-tax profit made in the same period of last year, the company’s financial data showed.
Consolidated revenue totaled NT$6.07 billion in the first half of the year, a surge of 628.69 percent from NT$833.45 million a year earlier, the company said.
EU eyes China for dumping
The EU has launched an anti-dumping investigation into imports of chemical phosphates from China, the European Commission said yesterday.
The investigation, which follows a complaint lodged by the European chemicals lobby last month, will look at imports of a chemical used in flame retardants and other products.
“The complainant has provided evidence that imports of the product under investigation from the country concerned have increased overall in absolute terms and in terms of market share,” the European Commission said in its official journal.
NT up against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, rising NT$0.038 to close at NT$32.152.
Turnover totaled US$561 million during the trading session.
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
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