US$12.65bn raised on TWSE
Enterprises raised NT$384.8 billion (US$12.65 billion) in funds in the local capital market for the first nine months of this year as they were speeding up the pace of expansion, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE).
Market analysts said the large fund demand in the local market in the past nine months partly reflected several prominent initial public offerings (IPOs), including a listing of Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC, 漢翔航空) on the main board in August that raised more than NT$9.34 billion.
To encourage more enterprises at home and abroad to raise funds in Taiwan, the TWSE is determined to eliminate more market barriers by revising rules governing the local securities industry, while it will continue to visit unlisted companies to provide necessary assistance for their future listings on the market.
Securities firm profits drop 98%
Statistics compiled by the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) showed that 79 securities firms operating in Taiwan posted NT$115.26 million (US$3.79 million) in net profits last month, down 98.27 percent from a month earlier, after the TAIEX contracted by almost 5 percent for the month.
The average daily turnover on the main board fell 11.9 percent from a month earlier to NT$81.2 billion, which led to a 13.6 percent drop in fee income generated by these brokerages in the local market, the TWSE said.
Last month, 38 securities companies posted profits, while the remaining 41 incurred losses. Overall, they posted NT$0.004 in earnings per share (EPS), down from NT$0.203 in August.
In the first nine months of this year, the securities firms registered NT$0.818 in EPS, compared with NT$0.428 a year earlier, the TWSE said.
New iPhones boost exports
The launch of two new iPhones by Apple Inc is expected to help Taiwanese supply chain firms boost shipments and in turn lift Taiwan’s export orders last month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said on Saturday.
The ministry said that Taiwan is expected to report more than US$40 billion in export orders last month, up from US$38.21 billion recorded in August.
The ministry is scheduled to release last month’s export order data today.
It is also scheduled to release the industrial production and commercial sales data for last month on Thursday.
The ministry said the latest food scandal related to cooking oil, which has raised concerns over local food safety, is likely to have only a limited impact on local industrial production, but could have affected sales in the local restaurant sector last month.
Semiconductor demand slows
Foundry operator Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) on Saturday said that the semiconductor industry would likely face the impact of a slow season this quarter and next quarter.
Vanguard president Fang Leuh (方略) told reporters in Hsinchu at the company’s annual family-day event that industry sentiment should recover from the second quarter of next year.
As for Vanguard itself, vice president Tseng Dong-liang (曾棟樑) said that the company’s sales for this quarter would continue growing from last quarter, following its acquisition of Sumpro Electronics Corp’s (勝普) 8-inch fab and equipment from Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) in July.
He did not elaborate.
No Vietnamese oil: Uni-President
Taiwan’s largest processed food producer, Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), on Sunday listed its oil sources for the production of cooking oils and animal feed, stressing that it has never imported oil from Vietnam, the origin of controversial oils in the spiraling food scandal.
Tu Chung-cheng, director of Uni-President’s public affairs division, said that President Nisshin Corp (統清), Uni-President’s cooking oil making subsidiary, has been purchasing its lard intended for human consumption from Spain.
The oils the company uses to make animal feed, including fish oil, beef tallow and lard, come from either South America, New Zealand, Australia or a Greater Tainan-based company called Beei Hae, Tu said.
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