TAIEX boosted by US gains
The TAIEX closed in positive territory yesterday as investors took cues from the gains posted by US high-tech stocks overnight to buy into the local electronics sector, dealers said.
Buying focused on large-cap electronics, in particular flat panel makers Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子) and rival AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), on hopes of improving profitability, while select old economy sectors fell back as investors locked in the gains seen a day earlier, they said.
The weighted index closed up 19 points, or 0.25 percent, at 7,642.26, on turnover of NT$89.62 billion (US$3.08 billion).
At the end of the session, the cement sector scored the highest gains among the eight major market sectors, finishing up 1.8 percent.
AUO sales rise 1.4%
AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the nation’s No. 2 LCD panel maker, yesterday said its sales for last month rose 1.4 percent month-on-month to NT$33.9 billion, from October’s NT$33.45 billion. The figure represented an annual growth of 10.9 percent from NT$30.58 billion.
Shipments of PC and TV flat panels grew 8 percent month-on-month to 10.7 million units last month, AUO said in a statement. Shipments of mobile devices fell 5.8 percent to 13.2 million units last month from a month ago, it added.
Central bank sells NCDs
The central bank yesterday sold NT$100 billion of 364-day negotiable certificates of deposit (NCDs) through an auction at an average interest rate of 0.730 percent, the lowest yield since January last year.
It was lower than the 0.758 percent interest rate recorded in the previous sales of a similar amount of 364-day NCDs on Nov. 2, the bank’s data showed.
The sale of the NCDs since April 2000 was the equivalent of increasing the required reserve ratio by 4.5 percentage points, it said.
Jeffrey Koo Sr dies
Banking magnate Jeffrey Koo Sr (辜濂松), founder and chairman of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), has died at the age of 79 in the US, the company announced yesterday in a statement.
Koo died at 8:02pm on Wednesday in the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, attended by close family and friends, the company said. There was no mention of the cause of death.
Chinatrust Financial said the company was shocked at its founder’s death and was calling off all year-end feasts for employees at both local and foreign operations.
The company’s operations will remain normal and Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川), a board director, will become acting chairman during the transition period, it said.
Huga Optotech sales drop
LED chip packager Huga Optotech Inc (廣鎵光電) yesterday said sales reached NT$208.93 million last month, down 6.3 percent month-on-month, but up 37.98 percent year-on-year.
In the first 11 months of the year, cumulative sales rose 30.4 percent to NT$2.02 billion, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Opto Tech Corp (光磊科技), a maker of LED components, also reported declining sales for last month at NT$577.26 million, down 13.2 percent from October. However, last month’s sales were up 4.34 percent from last year, with first 11-months sales totaling NT$6.16 billion, down 6.18 percent from a year ago.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.011 to close at NT$29.125. Turnover totaled about US$589 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