TAIEX down 0.75 percent
The TAIEX closed down 0.75 percent yesterday as investors kept realizing recent significant gains by dumping large-cap stocks to drag the index down below the key 9,000-point mark, dealers said.
The turnover totaled NT$120.78 billion (US$4.15 billion).
After yesterday’s losses, market sentiment turned cautious,” MasterLink Securities (元富證券) analyst Tom Tang (湯忠謙) said. “Further selling surfaced right after the market opened this morning as many investors rushed to pocket their gains.”
Tang said volatility on Wall Street and other regional markets further dampened investor confidence in the local bourse.
Trust investment capped at 20%
Taiwan will allow securities companies to invest up to 20 percent of their net worth in futures trust businesses, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.
The financial regulator also raised investment caps to invest as much as 20 percent of their net worth, from 10 percent, in investment trust, consulting and securities financing businesses, the statement said.
Motech arranging five-year loan
Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), Taiwan’s biggest solar cell maker by market value, is arranging a five- year loan, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The facility will consist of a NT$6 billion portion and NT$200 million portion with an average life of 4.25 years, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the details are private. The margin for both parts will be 60 basis points over respective benchmark rates, the person said.
E-ton to sell 600 million shares
Local solar cell maker E-ton Solar Tech Co (益通光能) obtained -approval from shareholders to sell 600 million shares via rights issue, or via private placement, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange late on Thursday.
E-ton shareholders also gave the go-ahead to issue NT$6 billion convertible bonds via private placement.
The Tainan-based company said that the speculation about Hon Hai Group’s (鴻海集團) intention to invest in E-ton by subscribing to its shares, or bonds was incorrect.
TSMC buys NT$4.98bn of gear
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, bought NT$4.98 billion of equipment from five vendors, according to five separate statements to the stock exchange yesterday.
The company purchased NT$579 million of gear from Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates GmbH, NT$718 million from Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co and NT$1.44 billion from Applied Materials South East Asia Pacific Ltd, it said. The chipmaker said it bought facilities and engineering equipment at NT$1.57 billion from Daifuku Co and NT$668 million from Taiwan Daifuku Co (台灣大福科技).
NT dollar continues climb
The New Taiwan dollar climbed for an eighth week, its best winning streak since March 2008, as foreigners added to their holdings of the nation’s equities and overseas sales rose more than forecast.
The NT dollar was 1.2 percent stronger one minute before the end of trading, before paring gains to 0.1 percent on suspected intervention by the central bank, according to two traders who declined to be identified.
“Strong economic data are driving the Taiwan dollar’s gain,” said Eric Hsing, a fixed-income trader at First Securities Inc.
A move beyond NT$29 is “very difficult,” he added.
Taiwan’s dollar advanced 0.6 percent this week to close at NT$29.42 against the US dollar.
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