TAIEX gains 0.15%
The TAIEX ended higher yesterday amid very cautious sentiment among investors, a drink contamination scandal and worries over the impact of the closure of some petrochemical plants, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 13.68 points or 0.15 percent to 8,823.68, on low turnover of NT$88.022 billion (US$3.05 billion).
Mosel Vitelic plant opens
Solar cell maker Mosel Vitelic Inc’s (茂矽) new plant in Hukou Township (湖口) in Hsinchu County began operations yesterday.
Company president Chen Min-liang (陳民良) said Mosel Vitelic began planning to enter the renewable energy industry about five years ago, seeing it as the trend of the future. The opening of the Hukou plant, he said, shows that the company is making steady progress.
According to Chen, the new plant’s maximum energy output will eventually reach 200 million watts or 200 MW.
He also said the energy conversion rate of the solar cell products will reach 16.7 percent.
Royalties unchanged: HTC
Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) said yesterday that Microsoft Corp has not asked for higher royalties on HTC’s Android handsets.
HTC said it had “reached an agreement with Microsoft last year on royalty fees” and the related costs were already reflected in HTC’s accounts.
“Microsoft has made no requests to increase its royalty fees for HTC phones,” the company said in response to media reports on the issue.
Earlier yesterday, it was reported that Microsoft planned to raise its royalty fees from US$5 per HTC handset to US$7.50 to US$12.50 for this year.
The move would translate into at least a 50 percent increase in the royalty fees paid by HTC to Microsoft-, according to the reports.
Last year, HTC signed a new patent deal with Microsoft that allows HTC to use Microsoft’s patented technologies in phones running Google’s Android operating system.
Hotai reports strong sales
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the local dealer for Toyota and Lexus cars, remained Taiwan’s largest automobile retailer this year after reporting strong sales for the first four months yesterday.
Hotai recorded sales of 43,055 vehicles, up 40.8 percent from a year ago, during the January to April period.
The sales brought in NT$30.41 billion in revenue, representing a pre-tax net profit of NT$2.8 billion, up 9.8 percent year-on-year. This translates into an earnings per share of NT$5.13, setting a record high for the four-month period.
BOT loan deal signed
Bank of Taiwan (BOT, 台灣銀行) signed an agreement with Bank of Communications Co (交通銀行) to cooperate on loans, trade financing, and personnel training, the Taipei-based lender said in an-mailed statement yesterday.
Uni-President investment
A unit of Uni-President Enterprises Corp’s (統一企業) invested US$12.75 million for a 75 percent stake in a newly formed venture in China’s Nanning city, the parent company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
NT dollar strengthens
The New Taiwan dollar advanced to its strongest level in two weeks on speculation exporters took advantage of recent declines in the currency to convert income at a more favorable exchange rate.
The NT dollar strengthened 0.2 per cent to NT$28.830 against its US counterpart.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts