TAIEX ends flat on profit-taking
The TAIEX was little changed yesterday after profit-taking emerged around the 8,200 level, dealers said.
The benchmark index fell 2.1 points, or 0.02 percent, to close at 8,189.44, after moving between 8,173.26 and 8,211.42 on turnover of NT$99.25 billion (US$3.16 billion).
The market opened up 0.13 percent on follow-through buying from Monday, but sentiment turned cautious as investors took hints from Wall Street’s overnight fall, dealers said.
A total of 2,227 stocks closed down, while 1,389 closed up and 370 were unchanged.
Evergreen orders seven ships
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) placed a US$721 million order for container ships with Samsung Heavy Industries Co, as Asia’s largest container line works through plans to buy 100 new vessels.
Evergreen Group’s listed unit ordered seven vessels, each able to carry 8,000 standard 20-foot containers, it said in a stock exchange statement yesterday.
The company didn’t give delivery dates for the vessels, which will cost US$103 million each.
Radium Life wins land auction
Real estate developer Radium Life Tech Co (日勝生) yesterday won the right to lease, develop and operate for 50 years a plot of land owned by the Taipei City Government.
Radium Life offered NT$1.2 billion (US$37.5 million) for the 406 ping (1,340m²) lot on Fuxing S Road Sec 1 in yesterday’s auction.
The final bid represented a 92 percent premium over the NT$620 million floor price set by the city government.
The bidding attracted more than 10 bidders from the real estate and life insurance industries.
Radium Life said it planned to develop the property into a service apartment.
Acer tablet to use Android
Acer Inc (宏碁) plans to release a tablet computer using Google Inc’s Android system and featuring a 10-inch screen in the first quarter, said Scott Lin (林顯郎), president of Acer’s Taiwan operations.
Qualcomm Inc or Nvidia Corp will likely be its chip supplier, he said in an interview yesterday.
He added that Acer might decide not to offer a 7-inch model.
Jim Wong (翁建仁), head of IT products division, said in a June 18 interview, that the firm planned to release a 7-inch tablet before the end of the year.
Asahi to buy stake in Ting Hsin
Asahi Breweries Ltd will invest US$520 million for a 6.54 percent stake in Ting Hsin (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp (頂新) — a packaged food maker and distributor in China — as part of its strategy to expand in the world’s most populous country.
The investment is part of an alliance with Japanese trading company Itochu Corp, the brewer said in a statement yesterday.
Asahi will also sell an 8 percent stake in its 40 percent-owned venture, Tingyi-Asahi Beverages Holdings Co, to Ting Hsin for US$520 million.
Through the alliance, Asahi and Itochu, which bought 20 percent of Ting Hsin in 2008, will sell health food in China and Taiwan, the statement said.
NT down on ‘intervention’
The New Taiwan dollar closed down yesterday on signs that the central bank bought the US currency in the final minutes of trading, two traders familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
The NT dollar rose as much as 0.3 percent earlier yesterday, but fell 0.1 percent to close at NT$31.50 versus the US dollar, according to Taipei Forex Inc. It was trading 0.2 percent stronger at NT$31.41 four minutes before trading ended.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by