Eurozone fears impact TAIEX
The stock market retreated yesterday as a downgrade of Spain’s credit rating by Standard & Poor’s raised concerns about the debt crisis in Europe, dealers said.
Financial shares encountered heavy selling by foreign institutional investors after JPMorgan Chase’s disappointing third-quarter results announcement heightened fears that banks’ exposure to eurozone debts would impact on the sector’s bottom line, the dealers said.
The TAIEX closed down 70.25 points, or 0.95 percent, at 7,358.08, after moving between 7,353.80 and 7,430.50, on turnover of NT$84.41 billion (US$2.79 billion).
Epistar to cancel repo bonds
Epistar Corp (晶電), the nation’s largest LED chipmaker, has repurchased and will cancel US$6.8 million of zero-coupon convertible bonds from the open market, according to a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Bonds seen to go for 1.05%
A government auction of NT$40 billion in five-year bonds is expected to go for 1.05 percent on Monday, according to a median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
A poll of five finance firms showed the highest forecast was 1.07 percent and the lowest 1.03 percent. That compares with the 1.044 percent yield on similar maturity notes in the secondary market at the close yesterday, according to GRETAI Securities Market.
Investors will bid on the yield at the auction. The issuer will set the security’s coupon by taking the highest winning yield.
Q4 notebook shipments to drop
Taiwan-based notebook makers’ combined shipments in the fourth quarter are expected to fall slightly amid a shrinking global market, a Taipei-based research firm said on Thursday.
Digitimes Research forecast that shipments would drop 1.3 percent to 44.6 million units from the previous quarter. However, the decrease would be smaller than a forecast 4.8 percent global decline, it said.
Both declines will be due mainly to the unstable global economy and the impact of tablet computers, Digitimes Research senior analyst Joanne Chien (簡佩萍) said.
In addition, although the first “ultrabooks” will hit the market in the fourth quarter, the prices — which she described as high — will not provide a major boost, she said.
Window-cleaner enters market
A window-cleaning robot that won a gold medal at the 2010 iENA Nuremberg International Trade Fair was launched in Taiwan on Thursday, the distributor said.
The robot, named Winbot, was invented by Taiwanese Chao Chih-mo (趙志謀) and uses magnets that allow it to be attached to both sides of windows up to 10mm thick to clean both surfaces at the same time, K.E. & Kingstone Co (嘉儀企業) said.
The robot is able to detect the area in need of cleaning on its own using automatic navigation technology and infrared sensors, the company said.
Banks ink agreement
Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) signed a cooperation agreement with Bank of China (中國銀行), the Taipei-based lender’s parent Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) said in a statement to the stock exchange yesterday.
Cathay United signed similar agreements with Agricultural Bank of China (中國農業銀行) and Bank of Communications (交通銀行) earlier this year.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar continued gaining ground against its US counterpart yesterday, adding NT$0.029 to close at NT$30.300 on turnover of US$738 million.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to