Rotational buying lifts TAIEX
Rotational buying in bellwether electronics stocks yesterday helped the broader stock market fend off downward pressure and reverse early losses caused by weakness on Wall Street overnight, dealers said.
However, while the TAIEX closed above the 7,600 mark, turnover failed to pick up. Investors turned cautious over the eurozone’s debt problems after Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou pledged to hold a referendum on a debt relief plan hammered out at a European summit last week, they said.
The TAIEX rose 34.32 points, or 0.45 percent, to close at 7,622.01, after moving between 7,505.96 and 7,656.26 on turnover of NT$97.29 billion (US$3.24 billion).
Bond sale yields 1.819 percent
The government sold NT$35 billion in 20-year bonds at a yield of 1.819 percent at an auction yesterday, the central bank said.
The sale attracted bids for 1.95 times the amount on offer, the bank said in a statement. The government last sold 20-year debt in July at a yield of 1.975 percent. That offer had a bid-to-cover ratio of 1.55 times.
The banking industry was the biggest buyer at the auction, taking 42 percent of the total issuance, followed by the insurance sector, with 28 percent of holdings.
MetLife acquisition completed
Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) completed the acquisition of MetLife Taiwan Insurance Co (大都會人壽) from MetLife Inc, the buyer said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The insurer will be renamed Chinatrust Life Insurance Co (中國信託人壽), the local financial company said.
Meanwhile, CCB Life Insurance Co (建信人壽) received approval from China Insurance Regulatory Commission to set up a Shandong branch, Taiwan-based China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽) said in a statement to the local stock exchange yesterday.
CCB Life is a joint venture between China Life and China Construction Bank Corp (中國建設銀行) among others.
Shanghai Bank signs MOU
Taiwan-based Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank (上海商業儲蓄銀行) yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China’s Bank of Shanghai (上海銀行) and Hong Kong’s Shanghai Commercial Bank (上海商業銀行) to strengthen business cooperation.
The three agreed to cooperate on areas including bank-to-bank transactions, inward and outward remittance, forex export and import services, account receivable factoring and syndicated loans.
The MOU also focuses on the exchange of personnel and expertise in the fields of wealth and risk management.
Shanghai Commercial posted NT$6.14 billion in pre-tax profit and NT$5.21 billion in after-tax profit in the first three quarters of this year. These figures translate into earnings per share of NT$2.14 before tax and NT$1.81 after tax. If the NT$1.42 billion spent on employee stock bonuses were included, the bank’s pre-tax profit would have reached NT$7.56 billion, up 9.8 percent from a year earlier.
NT dollar retreats
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US currency yesterday, falling NT$0.156 to close at NT$30.086 on turnover of US$1.08 billion.
The fall was a reflection of the declines in most of the currencies in the region after Australia’s central bank cut its key interest rates for the first time in two-and-a-half years, dealers said.
The rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia raised concerns over economic growth in the region, prompting traders to boost their holdings in the US dollar throughout the region, they said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by