SEMICONDUCTORS
Airoha shares surge on debut
Shares of fabless IC company Airoha Technology Corp (絡達科技) surged yesterday on its debut on the Emerging Stock Market, which is a preparatory board for the nation’s two main bourses. The stock closed 38.71 percent higher yesterday at NT$215 and at one point moved to NT$263.15, as investors expected Airoha to benefit from rising demand for power amplifiers amid smartphone users’ migration to 4G services and order allocation from MediaTek Inc (聯發科), which holds about 25 percent of Airoha. Analysts say the company is also a key beneficiary of the market’s wider adoption of Bluetooth system-on-chip solutions and increasing awareness of the Internet of Things. Last year, Airoha reported profit of NT$444 million (US$14.22 million), or NT$9.16 per share, with revenue of NT$3.64 billion.
ELECTRONICS
Investigators raid Innolux
Innolux Corp (群創), the nation’s biggest LCD panelmaker, yesterday said investigators raided the company on Tuesday as part of a corruption probe linked to a company employee surnamed Hsu (許). Innolux said the company’s operations were not affected by the investigations and that it would fully cooperate with the investigators. The company employee allegedly took NT$15 million in bribes in 2008 from a construction company, which helped Innolux build a new factory in Mioli, according to investigators from the Taoyuan Prosecutors’ Office.
ELECTRONICS
Unity Opto’s sales drop
Unity Opto Technology Co (東貝光電), the nation’s second-largest LED chip packager by sales, yesterday reported declining sales for last month, although total sales in the first half of the year grew from a year ago. Sales fell 4.39 percent year-on-year to NT$602.99 million last month due to major clients’ inventory adjustments. However, cumulative sales in the first six months rose 14.36 percent to NT$4.53 billion, the company said in a statement. Unity Opto said sales for this quarter would be higher than last quarter’s NT$2.19 billion, driven by major vendors’ new product cycle and recovering LED lighting demand.
GOVERNMENT DEBT
Taiwan’s bonds rise
Taiwan’s government bonds rose, pushing the 10-year yield to a five-month low, after exports fell and a selloff in Chinese equities deterred risk-taking. The yield on Taiwan’s bonds due March 2025 declined two basis points to 1.477 percent, Taipei Exchange prices showed. That is the lowest for benchmark 10-year notes since Feb. 2. The yield on similar-maturity Treasuries has dropped 19 basis points this week to 2.19 percent. “There are foreign investors parking their funds in the bond market as stocks are falling because of various problems including Greece,” First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) fixed-income trader Jerry Lin said, adding that the 10-year yield may drop below this year’s intraday low of 1.455 percent.
CHINA
Government plans stimulus
The government plans to spend 250 billion yuan (US$40.3 billion) to foster growth in areas of the economy most in need of support, the Cabinet said yesterday. The State Council said after a weekly meeting that authorities would also accelerate construction of big public services projects, such as the building of roads and water conservancy facilities. The Cabinet did not comment on China’s stock market, which has slumped nearly one-third since last month.
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