TAIEX closes below 7,200
The TAIEX dropped 0.77 percent yesterday, closing below the 7,200-point barrier.
The weighted index ranged between a high of 7,222.61 and a low of 7,157.90 before closing down 55.67 points at 7,166.38 on turnover of NT$55.85 billion (US$1.86 billion).
A total of 1,209 stocks closed up and 2,515 finished down, while 359 remained unchanged.
All of the market’s eight major stock categories closed down, with plastics and chemical shares suffering the steepest loss at 1.82 percent after coming under pressure from the continuing slide in international crude oil prices.
As fears of the eurozone debt crisis and financial uncertainty in the US ease, the chances that the TAIEX will fall below 7,000 are limited, Primasia Securities vice president Wang Chao-li (王兆立) said.
The market would more likely remain in a correctional mode in the short term, he said.
Airport Corp posts big revenue
Taoyuan International Airport Corp (桃園國際機場公司) posted NT$3 billion in net income last year, with half derived from duty-free sales, according to the year-old government-owned company.
The earnings, double the NT$1.5 billion forecast at the beginning of the year, came after deducting operating costs, fees paid to the Taoyuan County Government and NT$4.4 billion in rental fees from revenues of NT$12.5 billion.
Aviation revenues accounted for 45 percent of the company’s earnings, while non-aviation revenues, consisting mainly of duty-free sales, accounted for the rest, president Samuel Lin (林鵬良) said. He said Japanese tourists were at first the biggest group of buyers of duty-free goods, but they were overtaken by Chinese tourists.
The company said it hopes to develop more sources of revenue in the non-aviation sector because of the limited growth potential of aviation-related revenues, such as landing fees and fees for aircraft staying at the airport overnight.
Bank of China opens branch
Bank of China (中國銀行), the first Chinese bank to begin operations in Taiwan, will celebrate the official opening of its branch in Taipei tomorrow, with bank president Li Lihui (李禮輝) scheduled to attend.
The branch will only be allowed to conduct corporate finance during the initial stage of its operation, providing services to Taiwanese businesspeople and Chinese firms in Taiwan. The bank only takes deposits larger than NT$3 million.
Market sources believe the Chinese bank will become one of the designated clearance banks to be included in a yuan clearing agreement due to be signed by Taiwan and China.
Taipower, IPPs do not agree
State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) failed to reach an agreement yesterday with four independent power providers (IPPs) in a meeting to negotiate changes in the terms of the contracts that stipulate conditions for selling electricity to Taipower.
Taipower asked the IPPs to distribute 60 percent of the profits they generate to the people of Taiwan and keep the remaining 40 percent, if their return-on-assets-ratio exceeds 3 percent.
The representatives of the IPPs did not agree with Taipower’s proposal, saying that changes in the terms of the contracts need to be approved by their boards.
NT drops against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.027 to close at NT$29.995.
Turnover totaled US$649 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