STEELMAKERS
CSC profit, shipments drop
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s biggest steelmaker, yesterday said consolidated pre-tax profits plunged 27 percent to NT$2.06 billion (US$65.6 million) last month from NT$2.86 billion in January. Revenue shrank 20 percent to NT$23.58 billion last month, compared with NT$29.4 billion in January. Shipments of carbon steel tumbled about 20 percent sequentially to 644,118 tonnes last month, compared with 824,916 tonnes in January.
CHIPMAKERS
Faraday to boost returns
Faraday Technology Corp (智原), a fabless chip designing service and silicon patent provider, yesterday said its board approved a plan to cancel 40 percent of its capital shares in a bid to boost shareholders’ return on equity. After canceling 166 million shares, Faraday will have 248.5 million capital shares, according to a statement the company submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company plans to pay back NT$4 per share to shareholders. The firm is scheduled to hold an annual shareholder’s meeting on June 9 to approve the capital reduction plan.
INVESTMENT
Merrill Lynch hosts forum
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is to host an investors’ conference at the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel in Taipei beginning today that will discuss the next growth drivers in the dynamic technology industry. The “Taiwan, Technology & Beyond Conference — Catch A Wave,” scheduled to run from today to Thursday, is in its 18th year and is expected to bring together senior executives from about 130 domestic and foreign companies representing both high-tech and non-high-tech sectors. Among the scheduled speakers are executives from Taiwan-listed technology companies, such as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), contract laptop maker Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), touchpanel maker TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), DRAM memory chipmaker Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) and wireless carrier Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), according to Merrill Lynch. The three-day conference is set to open today with a keynote speech by Merrill Lynch semiconductor analyst Daniel Heyler, who will discuss “the next growth wave in mobile.”
MARKETS
TAIEX falls on electronics
The TAIEX closed lower yesterday as foreign institutional investors continued to pull their funds out of large-cap electronics heavyweights. The TAIEX fell 66.44 points, or 0.69 percent, to close at the day’s low of 9,512.91 after reaching a high of 9,590.76. Turnover was NT$81.07 billion. The market opened higher following early gains in other Asian markets, but it fell into negative territory shortly before 9:30am and continued falling the rest of the session on weakness in the electronics sector. The bellwether electronics sub-index fell 1.06 percent, the biggest decline posted by any sector yesterday. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the heaviest weighted stock in the market, fell 2.01 percent to close at NT$146.0, while IC design firm MediaTek Inc (聯發科) tumbled 3.57 percent to close at NT$432.0. Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$9.04 billion in shares, much of it coming in the electronics sector. They were net sellers of nearly 10.7 million TSMC shares and nearly 7.9 million MediaTek shares during the session, stock exchange data showed.
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
France cannot afford to ignore the third credit-rating reduction in less than a year, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure said. “Three agencies have downgraded us and we can’t ignore this cloud,” he told Franceinfo on Saturday, speaking just hours after S&P lowered his country’s credit rating to “A+” from “AA-” in an unscheduled move. “Fundamentally, it’s an additional cloud to a weather forecast that was already pretty gray. It’s a call for lucidity and responsibility,” he said, adding that this is “a call to be serious.” The credit assessor’s move means France has lost its double-A rating at two of the
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
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