Spain bailout lifts TAIEX
The TAIEX rose 1.72 percent yesterday, led by electronics stocks, after eurozone countries agreed to lend Spain up to US$125 billion to shore up its teetering banks.
The weighted index ranged between a high of 7,137.98 and a low of 7,081.72 before closing up 120.58 points at 7,120.23 on turnover of NT$65.21 billion (US$2.18 billion).
A total of 2,612 stocks closed up and 1,378 finished down, while 332 remained unchanged.
All of the market’s eight major stock categories closed up, with the financial sector netting the highest gain at 1.94 percent.
Scandal sees ASE shares fall
Shares in Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光), the world’s largest chip packager, dropped 1.7 percent to NT$25.60, the lowest close since Jan. 2, after company employees and their family members were questioned over the weekend for their alleged involvement in insider trading during ASE’s 2009 takeover of Universal Scientific Industrial Co (環隆電氣).
The Greater Kaohsiung-based company said on Saturday in an exchange filing that the investigation was not related to company operations and it had no knowledge of any alleged illegal activities.
Yageo sales up in China, EU
Taiwanese passive components service provider Yageo Corp (國巨) yesterday reported that consolidated sales rose 2.6 percent to NT$2.18 billion last month from April, but were down 0.9 percent from the same period a year ago.
The company’s accumulated sales in the first five months dropped 11.6 percent to NT$9.87 billion from NT$11.16 billion in the same period last year.
Yageo said sales increased in the Greater China region and in Europe last month from April, but slowed in the North American and Asia-Pacific regions.
Taiwan-Vietnam trade summit
A seminar on Taiwan-Vietnam bilateral trade ties will be held on June 26 in an effort to boost investment in Vietnam.
Taiwanese investments in Vietnam have fallen in recent years due to sluggish global demand and changes in Vietnam’s investment climate, according to the Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research, organizer of the seminar.
Taiwan remains the biggest importer of Vietnamese workers in the world and is also the third-largest economy that makes direct investments in Vietnam.
Science park expansion passed
The Council for Economic Planning and Development yesterday approved an expansion for the Central Taiwan Science Park project (中部科學園區) in Greater Taichung.
Development costs for the project, which is expected to be completed in 2015, would total NT$6.73 billion (US$224.9 million), the council said.
The expansion would create 7,000 jobs, with total annual output value expected to reach NT$200 billion, the council said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker, is investing NT$400 billion to construct an 18-inch wafer fab at the park in 2014, a science park official added.
Yang Ming launches new ship
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), the nation’s second-largest container shipper in terms of fleet scale, yesterday said a new vessel is scheduled to begin service on Wednesday next week.
YM Uniformity (結明輪), an 8,626 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs) full-container vessel built by CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台灣國際造船), was delivered yesterday.
The vessel will be deployed on Yang Ming’s Asia-North European route, along with three other new 8,600-TEU container ships.
NT dollar up against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.056 to close at NT$29.92.
Turnover totaled US$671 million during the trading session.
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San