TAIEX dips on profit concerns
The TAIEX closed down 0.16 percent yesterday amid market concern that higher oil prices and a strengthening New Taiwan dollar could hurt the second-quarter profits of some companies.
The index closed 14.27 points lower at 8,880.27 on relatively low trading volume of NT$96.624 billion (US$3.34 billion).
Hua Nan Securities Co (華南永昌投顧) chairman David Chu (儲祥生) said rising oil prices could erode corporate profits, raise inflationary pressure and hurt demand.
Meanwhile, shares of Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控), which announced its acquisition of Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券) in a NT$48.9 billion (US$1.69 billion) deal on Saturday, fell 3.5 percent to close at NT$20.65, as the market decided the deal was overpriced.
Polaris, however, saw its shares rise 1.21 percent to close at NT$20.85.
Compal Q1 revenue plummets
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s second-largest notebook contract maker, yesterday reported that consolidated sales last month reached NT$66.8 billion.
The figure was up 53 percent from February, but down 14 percent from March last year, it said in a statement.
Total revenue in the first quarter dipped 25 percent from a year ago to NT$163.9 billion amid slower shipments to its major client, Acer Inc (宏碁).
Compal said it shipped 10.4 million laptops in the first quarter.
Synnex posts record sales
Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強國際) reported record sales last month thanks to strong demand for smartphones and other consumer electronic products.
The world’s third-largest distributor of technology products and electronics parts took in NT$28.77 billion in consolidated revenue last month, up 19 percent from the same period last year.
The strong sales last month helped drive the company’s consolidated sales for the first quarter of this year to NT$74.4 billion, its second-highest quarterly revenue on record.
The company’s first-quarter sales soared 20 percent over the NT$62.3 billion recorded in the same period last year, beating market expectations.
Synnex attributed the growth to strong sales of smartphones, tablet computers and semiconductor components.
Chunghwa’s Q1 beats forecasts
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s largest telecoms operator, posted first-quarter profit that beat analyst estimates as a lower tax rate and increased demand for data services helped counter higher costs.
Net income dropped 1.6 percent to NT$11.9 billion from NT$12.1 billion a year earlier, it said in a statement yesterday. The average of four analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg was NT$11.6 billion.
Chunghwa is turning to Internet television, high-speed optical fiber data and value-added wireless services to offset slowing fixed-line and mobile-phone revenues. Net income was helped by a cut in the corporate tax rate to 17 percent from 25 percent, it said in an exchange filing.
Sharp to buy Rechi shares
Rechi Precision Co (瑞智密) yesterday said Sharp Corp would buy 22.7 million new shares issued through a private placement at NT$14.77 each.
The purchase would give the Japanese company a 5.45 percent stake in the Taoyuan-based maker of compressors, Rechi said in an exchange filing.
NT dollar edges down
The New Taiwan dollar dropped NT$0.001 to close at NT$28.992 against the US dollar
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Alphabet Inc CEO Sundar Pichai is deepening a push into enterprise software, signaling to investors at Google’s annual cloud conference that artificial intelligence (AI) agents — human-like digital assistants — are a lynchpin of its strategy to monetize AI. At the three-day conference in Las Vegas that started yesterday, Pichai and key Google executives aim to position the company’s AI tools as production-ready infrastructure for enterprise customers who are emerging as the industry’s most reliable revenue stream. Mountain View, California-based Google yesterday announced that it was unifying a set of AI products under the name “Gemini Enterprise.” Most notably, that involves rebranding and
RSS