The nation’s listed companies last year raised less funds on the open market than a year earlier, due to rising interest rates, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday.
Listed companies raised a combined total of NT$570.06 billion (US$18.19 billion) in both domestic and foreign capital markets last year, down 30.57 percent from NT$821.04 billion in 2013, the commission said in a statement.
“Several companies, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co [TSMC, 台積電] and China Steel Corp [CSC, 中鋼], launched large-scale fund-raising in 2013,” Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director Wang Yung-hsin (王詠心) told a media briefing. “By comparison, there were fewer large-scale fund-raising events last year, which led to a decline in the total funding amount.”
There were 361 public fund-raising events last year, up from 336 a year earlier, data showed.
Wang said the decline in fund-raising did not necessarily indicate that industries had reached the limits of capital demand, or justify pessimism over the economic outlook, as firms can still get funds through bank loans or other means.
However, the decline in funds raised last year does reflect the relatively lower interest rates last year from a year earlier, as some firms chose to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, she added.
The total amount of funds raised through private placement deals reached NT$107.98 billion last year, up 15.27 percent from NT$93.68 billion in 2013, the commission said in the statement.
Overall, the nation’s listed companies raised 91.37 percent of their funds domestically, and only 8.63 percent overseas, an indication that most firms still prefer raising capital locally, the commission said.
Overall, the companies used 42.32 percent of the funds for debt repayments, 31.49 percent for working capital and 21.41 percent to expand factory facilities, the commission’s statistics showed.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by