TAIEX closes higher
The TAIEX closed higher yesterday as a rise in financial shares and heavy-weight electronics stocks offset the impact of a Wall Street drop on Friday, dealers said.
With local banks expected to reveal their strategies for investing in China to institutional investors at upcoming briefings, most investors were pinning their hopes on a brighter outlook for domestic banks in the wake of government approval to expand their business in China, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 48.62 points or 0.61 percent to 7,975.93, after moving between 7,924.10 and 8,013.12 on turnover of NT$122.56 billion (US$3.8 billion).
A total of 1,903 stocks closed up and 1,860 were down, with 298 remaining unchanged.
The cement sector posted the highest gains, up 2.6 percent. Financial shares rose 2.2 percent, construction issues moved up 2.0 percent, and textile shares added 1.6 percent.
UMC running at full capacity
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s third-largest custom maker of chips, will run at full capacity this quarter and has not had cancellations from customers, Richard Yu, head of investor relations at the Hsinchu-based company said by telephone yesterday.
“Customers are being more rational in their requests for capacity allocation whereas previously they had made more inflated allocation requests,” Yu said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and UMC are no longer facing a situation where clients are waiting in line to place orders, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported, citing industry sources it did not name.
Elizabeth Sun (孫又文), deputy spokeswoman for TSMC was not immediately available for comment.
AU Optronics shares drop
Shares in AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the nation’s second-biggest LCD panel maker, fell 2.1 percent yesterday in trading, closing at NT$28.30, their lowest since April 8 last year.
The stock earlier fell as much as 4.2 percent, leading shares of LCD makers lower across Asia. RBS’s
Jeffrey Toder said panel-maker stocks fell mainly because of concerns about falling LCD prices, rather than the ongoing price-fixing investigation in the US.
AU Optronics said chief executive officer Lai-Juh Chen (陳來助) and the company’s vice chairman Chen Hsuan-bin (陳炫彬) currently face price-fixing charges in the US and were barred from leaving the country yesterday.
Yang Ming sells airline stake
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) plans to sell a 12 percent stake in Yangtze River Express Airlines Co Ltd (揚子江快運) for 150 million yuan (US$22 million), the shipping line said in a stock exchange filing yesterday.
Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) will sell a 6 percent stake in China-based Yangtze River Express for 75 million yuan, the shipping company said in a separate filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
China Airlines Ltd (中華航空). plans to sell a 25 percent stake in Yangtze River Express for 312.5 million yuan, the carrier said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
NT down against US dollar
The New Taiwan dollar depreciated against the US dolllar yesterday, down NT$0.033 to close at NT$31.968.
Turnover totaled US$428 million during the trading session.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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