TAIEX dips slightly to 8,043.92
The TAIEX closed down 0.14 percent yesterday, although the benchmark index remained above the psychological 8,000-point level.
The market jumped 65 points immediately after the opening bell and quickly moved to the day’s high of 8,123.15.
However, it dipped to a low of 7,997.05 prior to the end of the trading session.
The index closed down 11.02 points at 8,043.92. Turnover totaled NT$82.37 billion (US$2.79 billion) during the session.
A total of 1,121 stocks closed up, while 2,987 finished down and 333 remained unchanged.
Most of the eight major stock categories closed down, with plastics and chemicals suffering the heaviest losses, closing down 1.1 percent.
Largan to pay NT$17 dividend
Camera lens maker Largan Precision Co’s (大立光) board of directors yesterday approved a plan to pay a cash dividend of NT$17 per share to its shareholders this year, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The NT$17 cash dividend will be higher than the NT$13.5 cash dividend distributed by the company last year, and it marks a record-high for Largan, the nation’s leading maker of handset lenses.
The dividend reflects the company’s record-high profitability last year.
Largan posted a record-high NT$5.2 billion net profit last year, or NT$38.75 a share, up 29 percent from a year earlier, company data showed.
Luxgens trek in Vietnam, Laos
A team of Vietnamese drivers yesterday embarked on a 1,000km tour from Hanoi to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, in a convoy of Taiwan-made Luxgens (納智捷) to show off the brand’s appeal.
The Luxgen convoy, comprised of at least seven models, is scheduled to arrive in the Vietnamese city of Vinh and stay for one night before heading to Laos the following morning, according to Chen Hsiang-lin (陳祥凌), a manager at Luxgen’s sole agent in Vietnam.
It will be a tough ride from Vinh to Laos because of the shoddy roads winding through the mountains, Chen said.
Representative to Vietnam Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬) said he hopes Luxgen, a Yulon Motor Co (裕隆) brand, can control a greater share of the automotive market in Southeast Asia.
Citigroup sells stake in SPDB
Citigroup Inc sold its 2.71 percent stake in Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB, 上海浦東發展銀行) for an after-tax gain of about US$349 million, as the company maneuvers to build its own business in China.
The US$668 million sale was made via a block trade to unnamed institutional investors, the New York-based bank said in a statement yesterday.
Citigroup and the state-owned SPDB are planning a new “strategic arrangement” for their cooperation that will involve using Citi’s worldwide networks and credit lines to support SPDB’s global expansion, it said.
Last month, Citi’s Chinese subsidiary received regulatory approval to become the first US-based bank to issue its own credit cards in China. The business will include both consumer and commercial cards, and is expected to launch before the end of the year.
Until now Citi was restricted to issuing cards through a joint venture with SPDB. That business will be taken over by the Chinese bank.
NT dollar closes stronger
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against its US counterpart yesterday, adding NT$0.03 to close at 29.532.
Turnover totaled US$464 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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts