Shares of smartphone vendor HTC Corp (宏達電) staged a rebound yesterday, driven by foreign institutional buying of the stock during the past six sessions, dealers said.
Despite the rally, market sentiment toward the stock remained cautious, amid concerns over HTC’s third-quarter sales and the stock’s movement in the future, dealers said.
HTC shares rose 2.19 percent to close at NT$140 (US$4.71), with 16.26 million shares changing hands. The TAIEX ended down 0.07 percent at 8,249.78.
“The gains were technical in nature after the stock’s recent heavy losses. The news of foreign institutional buying simply prompted investors to pick up bargains during the session,” Grand Fortune Securities (福邦證券) analyst Chen Wei-tai said.
According to the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE), foreign institutional investors bought almost 16 million HTC shares in the past six months, taking a 23.15 percent stake in the smartphone vendor, up from 22.04 percent on Sept. 9.
On Monday alone, foreign institutional investors bought a total of 3.32 million HTC shares, TWSE statistics showed.
“I think foreign investors were basically bargain-hunting and bought into the stock only for trading purposes,” Chen said.
In the first eight months of the year, the stock suffered a 47.31 percent decline, the steepest loss among the more than 800 stocks listed on the main board, dropping to NT$156.50 amid disappointing sales data for July and last month.
After a 47.31 percent drop over the past eight months, HTC shares continued to trend lower and closed at NT$137 on Monday, as investors rushed to dump the stock after the company confirmed that it laid off about 20 percent of its 150 employees at its US operations.
“Investors’ confidence has been hit hard by HTC’s gloomy sales reports for July and August, and escalating worry that the company will not achieve its third-quarter sales guidance of NT$50 billion to NT$60 billion,” Chen said.
Credit Suisse has forecast that the company’s sales could rise this month driven by its HTC Butterfly S and the HTC One mini.
However, Chen warned against buying HTC stock unless it posts positive sales numbers.
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