Shares rise on bargain hunting
Share prices in Taiwan moved into positive territory at the end of yesterday’s session on bargain hunting, after suffering losses earlier in the trading session because of a dive on Wall Street overnight, dealers said.
The buying pointed to hopes that the EU would come up with concrete measures later yesterday to resolve the eurozone’s debt crisis, but many cautious investors remained on the sidelines, keeping volumes down, they said.
The TAIEX closed up 44.61 points, or 0.60 percent, at 7,535.82, after moving between 7,425.99 and 7,548.51 on turnover of NT$84.86 billion (US$2.81 billion).
Construction loans slowing
Construction loans expanded at a slower pace last month, the central bank said yesterday, evidence that the property market is still cooling.
Construction loans increased 0.82 percent to NT$1.377 trillion (US$45.7 billion) last month from a month earlier. The growth rate was lower than the 1.53 percent increase recorded in August, central bank data showed.
Housing loans rose 0.24 percent to NT$5.427 trillion last month from the previous month.
Although the growth rate was higher than the 0.07 percent rate recorded in August, most of the increase came from preferential youth home loans provided by the eight major state-owned banks, the central bank said.
Everlight eyes unpaid leave
Everlight Electronics Co (億光電子), one of Taiwan's major LED chip packagers,, yesterday said it would implement unpaid leave next month and December in view of the global economic uncertainty and a weak season for the LED industry.
Chairman Robert Yeh (葉寅夫) was quoted by the Central News Agency as saying that the company would ask employees to go on two to three days of unpaid leave next month and five days unpaid leave in December.
Yeh said he expected demand for LEDs to start warming up in the second half of next year.
Catcher factories start trial runs
Metal-casing maker Catcher Technology Co’s (可成科技) factories in Suzhou, China, were set to conduct trial runs in phases from yesterday, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The plants were shut down earlier this month to improve the facilities on the orders of Chinese authorities after residents complained of an odor near the plants, the company said. Catcher needs approval from the authorities before resuming operations, it said.
Price of DRAM chips steadies
The price of DRAM chips finally held steady this month, boosted by growing demand during the notebook computer shopping season, after a 47 percent decline since May, Taipei-based market researcher Trendforce Technology Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday.
The price of mainstream DDR3/2GB DRAM chips was flat at US$1.06 per unit, TrendForce said in a report.
Robust growth in notebook computer shipments last month has helped to digest excessive DRAM inventories and the momentum is expected to carry into this month, the researcher said. Output reduction over the past three quarters also helped, it added.
NT dollar unchanged
The New Taiwan dollar closed unchanged against the US dollar yesterday at NT$30.125 amid cautious sentiment ahead of a summit where European leaders were scheduled to try to hammer out a concrete plan to resolve the eurozone’s debt problems, dealers said.
Turnover totaled US$646 million during the trading session.
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
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],”