TAIEX drops on recession fears
The TAIEX fell 1.06 percent yesterday, reversing earlier gains, as big-cap financial stocks fell amid concern over a global recession.
The benchmark index shed 82.07 points to close at 7,637.02, after moving between 7,847.99 and 7,853.53 on turnover of NT$139.768 billion (US$4.82 billion).
A total of 2,407 stocks closed up, 2,309 closed down and 489 were unchanged, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
All sectors ended lower, with cement posting the biggest drop at 2.2 percent, data showed.
Hon Hai scouts land for dorm
Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) is looking for land to build a dormitory for the 3,000 new employees it plans to recruit for a planned cloud computing center in Greater Kaohsiung, a municipal official said on Thursday.
Hon Hai is looking to offer each of its employees a 60 ping (198m2) home, said Lan Chien-chang (藍健菖), chief of Greater Kaohsiung’s Economic Development Bureau.
It has already requested that dormitory houses be offered first to the 300 Hon Hai engineers who currently work at the Kaohsiung Software Technology Park, where the cloud computing center will be built, Lan said.
The municipal government has already provided several plots of land for Hon Hai to choose from.
Powerchip gets debt extension
PC chipmaker Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) received agreement from creditor banks to extend medium to long-term credit by six months and debt repayments by the same period, the company said in a statement to the stock exchange yesterday.
Solargiga plans bond issue
Solar-energy parts maker Solargiga Energy Holdings Ltd (陽光能源) plans to sell up to 300 million yuan of bonds in Hong Kong, while New Focus Auto Tech Holdings Ltd (新焦點汽車) sold 200 million yuan of two-year 3.75 percent notes, according to a person familiar with the matter.
SinoPac Securities (Asia) Ltd has been hired to arrange the Solargiga deal, the person said, asking not to be identified as details are private.
Comtec delays TDR plans
Comtec Solar Systems Group Ltd (卡姆丹克太陽能系統集團) postponed its planned sale and listing of Taiwan depositary receipts (TDR) because of “ongoing volatility in the global financial markets” and because it does not need funds immediately, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday.
Meanwhile, Sumpo Food Holdings Ltd (森寶食品控股), a Hong Kong-listed chicken meat product supplier, on Thursday filed for a TDR issue on Taiwan’s stock exchange.
7-Eleven offers laundry service
President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), the operator of the nation’s largest convenience store chain, 7-Eleven, this week added a laundry service to serve customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
President Chain said convenience stores in Japan introduced such a service nine years ago to great fanfare, with its market seeing 30 percent growth every year. This inspired President Chain to move into Taiwan’s NT$10 billion laundry market, with the company saying its standard operating procedure would only take four days to clean and deliver customers’ laundry.
The service is currently only available at 7-Eleven stores in Taipei, New Taipei City (新北市) and Keelung.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.051 to close at NT$29.009, on turnover of US$1.155 billion.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six