TAIEX up on ‘cheap’ tech stocks
The TAIEX staged a technical rebound yesterday as bargain hunters turned active to pick up high-tech stocks by taking advantage of low valuations after a recent slump, dealers said.
However, the gains were capped ahead of the 7,300-point mark as market sentiment remained haunted by lingering concerns over the weakness of the global economy, they said.
The weighted index closed up 50.59 points, or 0.70 percent, at 7,293.22, after moving between 7,170.29 and 7,302.27 points on turnover of NT$83.64 billion (US$2.88 billion).
At the end of the session, the paper and pulp sector showed the highest gains among the eight major sectors of the market, finishing up 1.48 percent.
Sharp, Hon Hai still negotiating
Sharp Corp’s talks with Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) over a capital tie-up could continue beyond March if a deal is not reached by then, a senior executive at the Japanese electronics maker said.
While the two companies had previously agreed on a March 26 deadline, negotiations could be extended “depending on the situation,” the executive said at a press briefing yesterday. The company has not been able to reach a new deal with Foxconn, founded by billionaire Terry Gou (郭台銘), which initially agreed in March to buy a 9.9 percent stake in Osaka-based Sharp for ¥550 a share, or ¥67 billion (US$842.9 million), after its share price plunged amid widening net-loss estimates.
Sharp rose 2 percent to ¥155 in Tokyo trading yesterday, narrowing this year’s decline to 77 percent, the worst performer among more than 1,600 companies in the MSCI World Index of developed nations.
Taiwan’s fuel bill up 19.5%
Taiwan purchased more of its fuel from abroad last month as Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) increased processing. Shipments rose 13.2 percent from a year earlier to 27.6 million barrels, or about 890,000 barrels a day last month, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday. The nation’s monthly oil bill increased 19.5 percent to US$3.13 billion, the ministry said in a statement.
Formosa Petrochemical’s revenue last month climbed 19 percent from a year earlier as the firm increased its output of fuels and petrochemicals, the company said in a statement on Monday. Crude refined output in the month was 30,000 barrels a day higher than a year earlier, according to the statement.
IT firms must diversify: expert
Taiwanese application developers and companies that want to leverage Microsoft Corp’s and Google Inc’s operating systems should find other platforms, a Canadian expert said yesterday.
Both Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 and Google Inc’s Android systems are going to be “more closed,” said Jason Flick, president of Youi Labs, a user-interface design company based in Ottawa.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Taiwan-Canada forum in Taipei on user interfaces and experience development, Flick described the fact that Android certification is getting “increasingly rigorous and difficult” to get as “an interesting twist.”
The forum, organized by the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, offers a platform for participants to discuss future directions and how businesses can benefit from global trends.
NT dollar up as bank intervenes
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, rising NT$0.052 to close at NT$29.150 after reversing most of its earlier losses on the back of intervention from the central bank, dealers said.
Turnover totaled US$794 million during the trading session.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to