TAIEX falls 0.75 percent
The TAIEX fell 0.75 percent yesterday, dragged down by losses on Wall Street and in European markets on Friday on renewed concerns about Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and weak economic momentum in the US, dealers said.
The index finished down 58.41 points, or 0.75 percent, to close at 7,729.86 on anemic turnover of NT$58 billion (US$1.96 billion).
Most of the market’s eight major stock categories closed down, but food shares were the exception, finishing up 0.9 percent.
Capital Securities Corp (群益證券) fund manager Chen Huang-jen (陳煌仁) expected the benchmark index to move between 7,500 and 8,000 points in the short term.
Chen suggested the bourse might rebound because uncertainty over a capital gains tax has lifted and the outlooks for various industries have grown clearer.
Taichung-Okinawa flights start
Mandarin Airlines (華信航空), a subsidiary of China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), launched direct flights between Taichung and Okinawa on Saturday, saying it will operate round-trip flights twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday.
The new service will be operated as a charter flight in its initial stage, but the carrier said it hoped to begin regularly scheduled flight services between Taichung and the popular Japanese vacation destination within three months.
Mandarin Airlines said it hoped to use the new service to also build up Taichung as a gateway through which Japanese visit Taiwan.
In the first two months of this year, Taiwanese made 224,263 visits to Japan, up 7.43 percent from a year earlier, while visitor arrivals from Japan to Taiwan rose 9.23 percent to 227,371, according to Tourism Bureau data.
To meet rising demand from Taiwanese tourists, Mandarin Airlines launched charter flight services between Taichung and Seoul on April 6, operating four round-trip flights every week. The carrier is scheduled to begin charter services between Taichung and Macau on Saturday, providing seven round-trip flights a week.
CPC restarts naphtha cracker
CPC Corp, Taiwan (中油), the state-run oil refiner, started its No. 5 naphtha cracker yesterday after shutting it because of a fire on April 6, Jessica Tang (唐苑莉), a spokeswoman for the Taipei-based company, said by telephone. The damaged butadiene plant at the facility remains halted, she said.
Novatek approves cash dividend
Local chip designer Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠) yesterday said the board has approved to deliver cash dividend of NT$4.6 per share to shareholders, according to a company statement filed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
That represented 5.13 percent in dividend yield based on the stock’s closing price of NT$89.5 yesterday.
The chip designer’s net profits dropped 3.38 percent to NT$3.7 billion, or NT$6.16 per share, last year from the previous year.
AMOLED panel shipments surge
Global shipments of slim and -energy-efficient AMOLED flat panels are expected to more than double to 170 million units this year from last year’s 80.5 million units, driven by strong growth of smartphones, Taipei-based market researcher Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所) forecast yesterday.
The market was now dominated by South Korean firm Samsung, which supplied 97 percent of the world’s AMOLED panels used in mobile devices, Topology said in a report.
Lagging far behind their South Korean rival, Taiwan’s AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子) and Ritdisplay Corp (錸寶) planned to mass produce AMOLED panels this quarter, or in the second half of this year, Topology 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