NT dollar dips 0.6 percent
The New Taiwan dollar completed its biggest weekly decline since March, as demand for the greenback increased after US Federal Reserve officials raised their forecast for US borrowing costs.
The NT dollar dropped 0.6 percent this week, the most since the five days ending March 21, to close at NT$30.258 against the US dollar yesterday. The local currency declined NT$0.002 from Thursday.
Global investors cut holdings of Taiwanese equities for an eighth day yesterday, paring this quarter’s net inflow to US$2.7 billion, compared with US$7.3 billion in the three months through June, data compiled by the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
“Taiwan’s dollar has felt the impact of the US dollar,” Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) economist Cindy Yu (尤敏君) said. “Foreign investors’ net purchases of Taiwanese stocks have fallen. Equities had risen to pretty high levels earlier, so investors may be taking profit now.”
Advantech buys stake in Allied
Industrial computer maker Advantech Co (研華) has acquired a 4.5 percent stake in Allied Circuit Co (博智) for about NT$71.71 million (US$2.37 million) through a private placement.
That would make Advantech the second-largest shareholder of the Taoyuan-based supplier of printed circuit boards, after Compal Electronics Co’s (仁寶) nearly 20 percent.
Buoyed by the news, Allied Circuit rose by the daily limit, closing at NT$37.85 yesterday.
Allied Circuit reported a net profit of NT$69.31 million in the first half of this year, up 80.37 percent year-on-year, with earnings per share of NT$1.67.
Innolux profits from shares sale
Innolux Corp (群創), the nation’s top LCD panel maker, said it made NT$90.67 million in profit from selling 8.63 million shares of Chi Mei Materials Technology Corp (奇美材).
Chi Mei Materials makes polarizers used in flat panels.
Innolux sold Chi Mei Materials shares at NT$36.19 each, it said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday. That represented a 1.66 percent discount on Chi Mei Materials’ closing price of NT$36.80 on Thursday.
After the share disposal, Innolux has an 8.7 percent stake in Chi Mei Materials.
NDF finalizes profit-sharing plan
The state-run National Development Fund said on Thursday it finalized a plan to share between 15 percent and 80 percent of profits with venture-capital firms while jointly investing in Taiwanese startups.
The plan will be implemented after it is approved by the Cabinet at the end of this month at the earliest, the National Development Council said.
The council will review the plan three years after its implementation, it added.
Mobile cloud sales to rise: MIC
Sales of mobile cloud technology-based software and services in Taiwan are expected to increase 14.1 percent year-on-year to NT$20.34 billion next year, the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所) said in a research report released on Thursday.
Taiwan will ride the wave of the continued expansion of the global mobile cloud technology-based market and sales in the local market are forecast to increase to almost NT$26 billion in 2017, the government-funded research institute said.
Overall, sales of the global mobile cloud technology-based market is expected to surpass US$150 billion in 2017, it added.
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