TAIEX edges up
The TAIEX edged higher yesterday, closing above the 7,400-point mark, after large-cap electronics shares such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) rallied.
The weighted index ranged between a high of 7,462.15 and a low of 7,389.68 before finishing up 53.47 points, or 0.72 percent, at 7,450.53. Turnover was NT$74.70 billion (US$2.50 billion). A total of 2,557 stocks closed up, 1,758 finished down, and 396 remained unchanged.
Most of the market’s eight broad stock categories rose, with paper and pulp shares posting the highest gains, finishing up 2.3 percent, while financial shares closed up 0.2 percent, boosted by a memorandum of understanding on currency settlement signed by Taiwan and China last Friday.
Primasia Securities vice president Wang Chao-li (王兆立) said the local bourse appeared to be turning more positive, but he believed the market would remain in a correction mode in the short term.
JPMorgan downgrades Wintek
Wintek Corp (勝華), a touch panel supplier to Apple Inc and Google Inc, has been downgraded by JPMorgan Securities due to yield rate challenges encountered for its new products.
JPMorgan cut its stock rating on Wintek to “underweight” from “neutral” while reducing its target price to NT$12 from NT$14, the brokerage said in a recent report. Shares in Wintek closed 0.66 percent higher at NT$15.3 yesterday.
Last week, Wintek reported losses per share of NT$0.47 for the second quarter, well below JPMorgan’s estimate of NT$0.01 and the market consensus of NT$0.08.
JPMorgan analyst Narci Chang (張恆) said he believes this margin miss mainly came from the low yield at the initial ramp of new products like Google Nexus 7 tablets, as well as a drop in utilization rate due to iPhone order cuts.
JPMorgan predicted Wintek’s loss per share to narrow to NT$0.15 in the third quarter due to an expected improvement in yield rate on new products.
Taipei hosts SEMICON forum
High-ranking executives from leading semiconductor companies are scheduled to meet tomorrow in Taipei at the SEMICON Taiwan to share their views on industry trends.
The Executive Summit will comprise four keynote speeches and a panel discussion on Taiwan’s strategic role and opportunities in the semiconductor industry, according to the organizer, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).
Some 600 exhibitors from 170 countries have registered to participate in the show, which is projected to attract 30,000 visitors.
Dalian eyes Taiwan impetus
A planned technology city in Dalian, to be built as a major city and seaport in the south of Liaoning Province, China, is inviting Taiwanese businesses to take part in its development, a Dalian official said on Saturday.
Jin Guowei (靳國衛), deputy director of the Dalian Ecological Technology Innovation city, said the city is located in Ganjingzi, the largest district in Dalian, occupying an area of about 106km2.
He said that he would invite Taiwanese businesses to join the development in one of 10 communities being planned. The development project is to use Taipei City as a model, and it is estimated that an investment in the infrastructure will cost between 10 billion (US$1.57 billion) and 20 billion yuan.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.046 to close at NT$29.920.
Turnover totaled US$456 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