Share prices rebound
Taiwan’s benchmark stock index staged a rebound yesterday as optimism increased that debt-ridden Greece would be able to reach a debt restructuring deal with its private bondholders to avoid a default, dealers said.
The financial sector was boosted by rotational buying on hope that the government would relax restrictions on Chinese investment in local financial institutions, while construction stocks also attracted interest on relatively low valuations, they said.
The TAIEX closed up 81.48 points, or 1.03 percent, at 7,984.56, after moving between 7,905.50 and 8,000.93, on turnover of NT$104.15 billion (US$3.53 billion).
Yoshinoya stops serving beef
Yoshinoya, a famous Japanese fast-food restaurant that serves bowls of shredded beef and onions on rice, said yesterday that it would temporarily stop serving its beef products in Taiwan, effective immediately, because of a severe shortage of beef.
The announcement, posted on Taiwan Yoshinoya’s (台灣吉野家) Web site, made it the first restaurant chain to suspend sales of beef products amid the controversy regarding the importing of US beef containing ractopamine residues.
Ractopamine, a leanness-enhancing drug, is widely used as a feed additive in the US, but remains banned in Taiwan, China, the EU and other countries.
85°C to go to Hong Kong
Gourmet Master Co (美食達人), which operates the popular 85°C (85度C) bakery-and-coffee chain in Taiwan, China, Australia and the US, said on Wednesday it aims to extend its operations to Hong Kong and plans to open three to five outlets in the territory by the end of this year.
Gourmet Master is expected to open its first outlet in Hong Kong In the second quarter of this year, the cafe chain said.
The company said it is working with Cafe de Coral Group (大家樂集團), a fast-food restaurant operator in Hong Kong, to push forward its expansion plan.
Currently, the Taiwan-based cafe chain runs more than 600 outlets, including 330 in Taiwan, 270 in China, five in Australia and two in the US.
UMC sales drop 6.55%
United Microelectronics Co (UMC, 聯電), the world’s second-largest contract chip manufacturer by revenue, yesterday said its sales dropped 6.55 percent month-on-month to NT$7.52 billion last month, the lowest in 33 months, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Last month’s sales were 16.48 percent down year-on-year from NT$9 billion.
Accumulated sales for the first two months of the year totaled NT$15.57 billion, down 15.96 percent year-on-year, UMC said in the filing.
UMC said last month it expected revenue this quarter to dip slightly, from NT$24.23 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, mainly because of the falling average selling price as a result of the company’s changes of product mix.
Gas imports 7.3% lower
Taiwan imported 786,711 tonnes of liquefied natural gas last month for US$593 million, according to data from the Directorate General of Customs.
The amount was 7.3 percent lower than the 848,564 tonnes a year earlier, according to customs data.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.038 to close at NT$29.527 as the local bourse staged a rebound, boosting demand for the local currency, dealers said.
Turnover totaled US$758 million during the trading session.
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day