TAIEX closes higher
The TAIEX closed 0.39 percent higher yesterday, buoyed by energy conservation stocks and a rebound in construction shares, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed 33.96 points higher to end at 8,747.75, after moving between 8,692.10 and 8,768.31, on turnover of NT$110.999 billion (US$3.774 billion).
Energy-saving stocks, particularly LED firms, propped up the bourse on the back of higher international oil prices, analysts said.
A total of 1,869 stocks closed up, 2,210 were down and 506 remained unchanged.
Towel probe planned
The Ministry of Finance (MOF) announced yesterday it would start a six-month investigation into alleged anti-dumping practices by Chinese towel makers.
The ministry’s tariff committee has levied a 204.1 percent anti-dumping tax on imported China-made towels since June 2006, the ministry’s data showed.
“Since the proposed five-year levy period is going to end in June, we have accepted local towel makers’ suggestion to investigate the necessity of continuing the levy,” a tariff committee official said.
The MOF is to finish the investigation by Sept. 8 and notify the Ministry of Economic Affairs. It will then conduct a second-round investigation by Nov. 8. The MOF will make a final decision by Nov. 18 based on all of the investigation results.
If the MOF decides to keep the levy and a 10.5 percent tariff on towels, Chinese towel makers will have to pay NT$214.6 of duty for every NT$100 of export, on a CIF (cost, insurance and freight) basis.
Steel firms deny merger
Both China Steel Corp (中鋼) and Chung Hung Steel Corp (中鴻) yesterday denied they were in merger talks in order to increase production and lower costs, the two companies said in separate stock exchange filings.
China Steel, the nation’s top steel maker, owns about a 40 percent share of Chung Hung.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that China Steel was considering merging Chung Hung via a share swap and hoped to complete the deal by the end of June.
Meanwhile, China Steel executive vice president David Du (杜金陵) told Bloomberg yesterday that the company expected demand for the alloy to increase in the second quarter from the previous three months because of rising usage in China.
Medical tourism grows
Taiwan will continue to promote medical tourism among Chinese visitors to build on a developing trend, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said yesterday.
So far this year, 13 groups of Chinese visitors have booked medical tours, and the trend is expected to continue with an average of five such groups per month, said Tsai Hsiu-chen (蔡秀珍), a section chief at TAITRA’s Service Industry Promotion Center, while accompanying a group of 32 Chinese officials from Mongolia who were having health checks at Kaohsiung’s Chung-Ho Memorial Hospital.
There is great market potential in Taiwan for cosmetology tours that involve non-invasive procedures, especially those carrying little risk of medical malpractice suits, according to Chung Chin-yuan (鍾金源), head of an association that promotes medical tourism.
The Chinese visitors were the third medical tour group this year from the Inner Mongolia region, Tsai said.
NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar yesterday, down NT$0.011 to close at NT$29.437.
Turnover totaled US$704 million during the trading session.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured