TAIEX hit by holiday blues
The TAIEX edged lower yesterday on anemic trading as many foreign investors were away for the Christmas holiday, dealers said.
The weighted benchmark index closed down 4.62 points, or 0.06 percent, at 7,535.52. Turnover was NT$48.31 billion (US$1.66 billion).
Turnover remained low yesterday after just barely exceeding NT$40 billion during a rare session on Saturday, which was held to make up for a day that will be lost during the extended New Year’s holiday in February.
A total of 1,789 stocks closed up, 2,289 finished down and 500 remained unchanged.
Despite the weak momentum during the day’s session, five of the market’s eight major categories ended in positive territory. Cement shares and textile stocks both closed up 1 percent; plastics and chemical stocks gained 0.8 percent, as did paper and pulp shares; and construction shares rose 0.7 percent.
Outlook bright for Catcher
Metal casing supplier Catcher Technology Co (可成) is likely to post better-than-expected revenue growth next quarter, driven by new orders from HTC Corp (宏達電) and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, Morgan Stanley said.
The US brokerage house predicted quarterly revenue growth of 4 percent for Catcher in the first quarter of next year, compared with the Taiwanese supplier’s historical average of a 10 percent drop from the fourth quarter.
Morgan Stanley also forecast that Catcher will make good progress in the non-notebook segment next year by leveraging its competitive edge in metal casing solutions.
Morgan Stanley kept its “overweight” rating and its NT$205 target price on the company’s stocks, which closed down 1.05 percent at NT$141.5 yesterday.
Hsinchu Park adds value
The value of the goods produced by companies at the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) grew 2.08 percent during the first 10 months of the year to NT$861.53 billion from a year earlier, despite the lackluster global economy, park administrators said yesterday.
Biotechnology companies in the park saw the strongest growth in production, with their output value rising 26.23 percent from a year earlier to NT$6.04 billion.
The output value of computer and computer peripheral manufacturers rose 12.27 percent to NT$52.91 billion, while the precision machinery industry’s rose by 5.95 percent to NT$20.34 billion.
The integrated circuit industry — the biggest sector in the park — generated NT$598.56 billion during the first 10 months, up 3.92 percent from a year earlier, while optoelectronic companies saw output value fall 6.96 percent to NT$154.09 billion and telecommunications companies generated NT$25.84 billion, down 6.75 percent from last year.
Taipei Auto Show a success
The Taipei Auto Show finished yesterday with a total of 219,979 visitors having attended over the four-day run, an increase of 19 percent compared with the last show in 2010, organizer Top Link International Exhibition Co (上聯國際展覽公司) said.
“Car distributors in the show received approximately 1,000 orders in total, up from the 780 orders they logged in the previous show,” Top Link public relations officer Tina Lin (林曉美) said by telephone.
This year’s show generated sales of about NT$1 billion, up 25 percent from the NT$800 million earned in 2010, Lin said.
The expo attracted 34,000 visitors on opening day and saw the number increase to 60,002 on Saturday and 80,300 on Sunday, before dropping to 45,677 yesterday, the organizer said.
NT dollar loses to greenback
The New Taiwan lost ground to the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.008 to close at NT$29.128.
Turnover totaled about US$493 million during the trading session.
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last