TAIEX dips on profit-taking
The TAIEX pulled back on mild profit-taking yesterday as investors took cues from an overnight fall on Wall Street, dealers said.
Selling emerged in certain local electronics stocks after US-based personal computer vendor Dell Inc issued a cautious sales outlook for the quarter to October after Wall Street closed, they said. Some old economy stocks, in particular the textile sector, also suffered obvious sell-offs as investors locked in profits after recent gains, they added.
The weighted index closed down 10.23 points, or 0.14 percent, at 7,496.58, after moving between 7,461.07 and 7,501.26, on turnover of NT$62.28 billion (US$2.08 billion).
At the end of the session, the textile sector had suffered the heaviest losses among the eight major sectors, finishing down 3.5 percent.
Powerchip to trade new shares
Memorychip maker Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) yesterday said it would trade its new shares on the GRETAI Securities Market on Sept. 28 following a 60 percent, or NT$33.24 billion, cut in its capitalization. Investors could continue trading Powerchip’s old shares through Sept. 17.
The company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange that its paid-in capital will be approximately NT$22.16 billion following the capitalization reduction, with net value per share increasing to NT$2.15 from NT$0.86.
Patent lawsuit dropped
Bluestone Innovations LLC, a South Korean patent holding company, on Monday withdrew a patent infringement lawsuit against Taiwan’s LED chipmaker Formosa Epitaxy Inc (璨圓), the Taiwanese company said yesterday in a statement.
Formosa Epitaxy is among several LED firms facing legal complaints by Bluestone Innovations in 2010 for infringing upon its intellectual property in Group III-V nitride production process. Others include Taiwan’s Huga Optotech Inc (廣鎵光電) and Tekcore Co (泰谷光電) as well as Japanese LED chipmakers Nichia Corp and Toyoda Gosei Co.
TSMC raises NT$21.7 billion
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, has raised NT$21.7 billion (US$724 million) via a bond sale, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday.
TSMC sold NT$12.7 billion of five-year bonds at a yield of 1.28 percent, and NT$9 billion of seven-year bonds at a yield of 1.39 percent, the report said.
That was compared to the previous sales of NT$9.9 billion five-year bonds and NT$9 billion seven-year bonds in late June, when the five-year debts were sold at a yield of 1.28 percent and the seven-year bonds at a yield of 1.40 percent.
Rare earths quota increased
China has slightly increased this year’s quota for rare earths exports under controversial controls on the exotic minerals needed by manufacturers of mobile phones and other high-tech products.
The Commerce Ministry yesterday said the quota for the second half of this year will be 8,866 tonnes. Added to the quota for the first six months of the year, that brings the 2012 total to 28,119 tonnes — an increase of about 3 percent over last year.
China has about 30 percent of the world’s rare earths, but accounts for 97 percent of production. It alarmed global manufacturers when it imposed export controls in 2009 while it tried to build up its companies to produce products made of rare earths.
NT dollar declines
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.035 to close at NT$30.010. Turnover totaled about US$521 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
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