TAIEX closes higher
The TAIEX closed 0.57 percent higher yesterday after a surge on Wall Street overnight, but the gains were limited as the index approached 8,000 points, dealers said.
The index rose 45.85 points to 7,957.53, after fluctuating between 7,915.83 and 7,970.58, on turnover of NT$142.81 billion (US$4.49 billion).
The market opened up 0.63 percent with interest focusing on old economy stocks. Buying of select high-tech heavyweight stocks appeared slow on their relatively high valuations, dealers said.
The market fluctuated in a narrow band throughout trading as investors proved unwilling to chase prices on fears of a possible pullback as the index approached the 8,000-point mark.
A total of 2,377 stocks closed higher and 1,277 lower, while 281 remained unchanged.
Foxconn shares up 2 percent
Shares in Taiwanese IT giant Foxconn (富士康) gained 2.02 percent in Hong Kong yesterday after the company said it had resumed operations at an Indian factory where 250 workers were hospitalized.
The bounce in the company’s shares came after it announced resumption of work at the site in Chennai, southern India, where about half the workforce had been taken ill in an incident thought to be linked to spraying of pesticide.
Fitch downgrades TCB
Fitch Ratings has downgraded both its long-term and short-term rating of Taichung Commercial Bank (台中商銀), citing the lender’s weak earnings generation and core capitalization, the ratings agency said in a statement yesterday.
Fitch said it did not anticipate any meaningful improvement in the lender’s credit prospects in the near-to-medium term, despite the nation’s generally sound economic prospects.
Fitch said it expected the bank’s earnings to be subdued because of limited revenue growth this year. However, given no material change in the lender’s financial or risk profile in the near-term, Fitch offered a stable outlook, the statement said.
Central bank auctions CDs
The central bank yesterday auctioned NT$30 billion in 273-day certificates of deposit (CD) as it continues to absorb excessive funds in the market, a press release said.
The latest sale of CDs yielded an average interest rate of 0.593 percent with a bid-to-cover ratio of 3.8 times, compared with an average interest rate of 0.556 percent from the sales of NT$25 billion worth of 273-day notes on April 12, which had a bid-to-cover ratio of 7.07 times.
UMC buys new equipment
United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), the world’s second-biggest contract chipmaker, bought NT$526.6 million worth of equipment from Applied Materials South East Asia Pte, the Hsinchu-based company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
Chun Wey Yi denies report
Chung Wei Yi Co (中瑋一), a Taipei-based investment company, denied a newspaper report on Monday that it plans to sell its stake in the life insurance unit it acquired from Aegon NV in April last year.
TransGlobe Life Insurance Inc (全球人壽) is expected to post profits for the next three years starting from the second half of this year, the two companies said in a joint statement published in the Chinese-language Commercial Times yesterday.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, rising NT$0.018 to close at NT$31.850.
Turnover totaled US$771 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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained