TAIEX flirts with 7,500 points
The TAIEX ended higher yesterday as buying rotated to select large-cap high-tech stocks, but gains were limited by strong technical resistance ahead of the 7,500-point mark, dealers said.
The foodstuffs sector also attracted interest amid rising international food prices because of an ongoing drought in North America, while the financial sector suffered losses as investors pocketed the gains they had built up in recent sessions, dealers said.
The weighted index closed up 42.95 points, or 0.58 percent, at 7,479.25, after moving between 7,447.03 and 7,520.65, on turnover of NT$80.21 billion (US$2.68 billion).
Arima shares fall on jobs news
Shares of Arima Communications Corp (華冠通訊) fell yesterday after Motorola Mobility announced plans to cut 20 percent of its workforce, stirring up fears that the smartphone vendor would cut orders to the Taiwanese maker, dealers said.
Local media reported that because of Motorola Mobility’s plan to downsize, Arima is likely to lose orders for four of the US vendor’s smartphone models in the second half of this year.
Arima ended down 1.53 percent at NT$12.85.
In the first quarter of this year, Arima posted a net loss of NT$57.91 million, or a loss per share of NT$0.14. Analysts expected Arima to suffer a loss per share of between NT$0.7 and NT$0.8 for the whole of this year after taking into account Motorola Mobility’s downsizing plan.
Bank of Taiwan enters Shanghai
The state-owned Bank of Taiwan (台銀) yesterday opened a branch in Shanghai to serve Taiwanese businesspeople in the fast-growing city, the lender said in a statement.
The lender, the banking arm of Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), is widely expected to provide New Taiwan dollar settlement services once China and Taiwan work out a currency settlement mechanism.
TAITRA hosts sporting seminar
The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) said yesterday that it would sponsor a seminar on Tuesday next week to help Taiwanese businesses tap into commercial opportunities created by two major sporting events in Brazil in the next four years.
Brazil will host the World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016, making it the first country in South America to sponsor the Olympics and the fourth country to win the right to host the two major sports extravaganzas consecutively.
According to Brazil’s Ministry of Sports, the government will spend about US$20 billion to stage the World Cup. The money will be invested in match venues, transportation infrastructure, airports and harbors, ICT software and hardware and safety monitoring systems.
The country will spend an additional US$14.4 billion to host the Summer Games.
TSMC to go on buying spree
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker, yesterday said the company’s board had approved a capital appropriation plan to spend NT$71.75 billion to expand and upgrade its advanced technology capacity and another NT$11.29 billion to expand an existing factory building and install new systems.
In July, TSMC said it would retain its full-year capital spending at a record US$8.5 billion, mostly to ramp up production of 28nm chips, with part of the investment to be spent on developing 20nm chips.
NT dollar builds momentum
The NT dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.04 to close at NT$29.965.
Turnover totaled US$517 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
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
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],”
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