TAIEX closes higher
The TAIEX closed up 0.70 percent yesterday amid ample liquidity as buying focused largely on large cap stocks due to their relatively low valuations, dealers said.
The benchmark index rose 54.57 points to 7,890.11, after moving between 7,859.33 and 7,911.66, on turnover of NT$120.29 billion (US$3.77 billion).
The market opened up 0.83 percent on a technical rebound from the previous session as investors rushed to pick up market heavyweights that had been consolidating for some time, but these gains were compromised by strong resistance at about the 7,900 point level, dealers said.
A total of 2,058 stocks closed up and 1,650 down, while 326 remained unchanged.
CAL joins up with SkyTeam
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) had liquid debt of NT$26.8 billion at the end of last month, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The carrier had NT$11.9 billion in cash holdings, according to the statement.
CAL, the country’s biggest carrier, has agreed to join the SkyTeam alliance led by Air France-KLM Group and Delta Air Lines Inc, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The agreement may be announced as early as Sept. 14 by the Taipei-based carrier, they said.
Revenue up at Chinese Gamer
Taiwan’s leading online game maker Chinese Gamer International Corp (中華網龍) said yesterday that revenue was a record high NT$204.8 million (US$6.4 million) last month, up 41 percent from July and 6.5 percent higher than August last year.
The company launched Tianzhi Legend (天子傳奇) last month, an in-house production that had been in the works for 10 years, which successfully boosted sales, according to the statement.
The numbers of gamers playing the game at the same time hit 230,000 within the first month, breaking the record set by last year’s hit title Hero (中華英雄).
Thanks to the planned introduction of three more titles in the fourth quarter, Chinese Gamer said full-year revenues could set another new record.
HTC launches share buyback
HTC Corp (宏達電) bought back 4.8 million shares for NT$2.87 billion, or an average of NT$598.83 per share between July 28 and Sept. 3, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
The repurchased amount did not meet the original target as the share price in the later stages exceeded the ceiling the company set, the statement said. The original plan was to buy back 10 million shares at between NT$526 and NT$631 from July 13 to Sept. 11, the company said.
Formosa reopens Mailiao unit
Local oil refiner Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) expects to process 10 percent more crude oil this month after restarting a gasoline-making unit at its Mailiao (麥寮) refining complex.
Formosa Petrochemical expects to process 330,000 barrels of crude oil a day on average this month, compared with 300,000 last month, spokesman Lin Keh-yen (林克彥) said. Separately, the company restarted its No. 1 residue desulfurizer on Thursday, he said.
The No. 1 residue desulfurization unit was closed down Sept. 2 to correct a suspected flaw in the piping design. The company halted its No. 2 residue desulfurization unit after a fire on July 25.
NT dollar up against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, up NT$0.029 to close at NT$31.910.
Turnover totaled US$582 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