STOCK MARKET
TAIEX at lowest since 2013
The TAIEX slumped to its lowest level since August 2013 amid concern the nation’s slowing economy and China’s currency devaluation will hurt corporate earnings. The TAIEX fell 1.9 percent to close at 8,021.84 points. At one point, the benchmark gauge briefly entered a bear market after tumbling 20 percent from a 15-year high on April 27 before paring losses. “The wave of declines is rooted in the problems in Taiwan’s economy,” Capital Investment Management Corp (群益投顧) vice president Alan Tseng (曾炎裕) said yesterday. Last week, the government halved its GDP growth forecast to 1.56 percent for this year from 3.28 percent after exports slumped for a sixth month. “The electronics industry is facing the toughest competition in 10 years because of China. The index will fall below 8,000,” Tseng said.
RETAIL
Convenience stores grow
The number of convenience stores in Taiwan rose 1.4 percent last year from the previous year to 10,154 and was 25.53 percent higher than the 8,089 that existed at the end of 2004, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said in a statement yesterday. In the past decade, the number of convenience store outlets has grown an average of 2.3 percent a year, the commission said. The stores served 2.91 billion customers last year, up about 30 million from a year earlier, according to the commission, with average spending of NT$71 (US$2.18) by consumers, up from NT$65 in 2009. The nation’s five major convenience store chains are President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), which operates 7-Eleven stores, Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店), Hi-Life International Co (萊爾富), Circle K and Million, which is run by state-owned Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖).
STOCKS
Cheng Shin shares drop
Tire maker Cheng Shin Rubber Industry Co (正新橡膠) yesterday saw its shares drop to close 2.52 percent lower at NT$54.1, their lowest level since 2009, after several foreign brokerages lowered their earnings growth forecasts for the company. The company on Tuesday held an investors’ conference at its Changhwa headquarters, saying it remained confident in its second-half growth outlook. However, the company might face market headwinds amid a slowdown in new car sales in China, which would affect demand for passenger car radial tires, and the prolonged transition time of the truck and bus radial tires, analysts said. “We expect the company to deliver downward earnings growth, given the shipment decrease and average selling price drop,” JPMorgan Securities Ltd said yesterday in a note. The brokerage forecast Cheng Shin’s sales to drop 4 percent year-on-year on lower average selling price and shipments.
SMARTPHONES
HTC mulls factory sale
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday did not confirm if it is in talks to sell its smartphone manufacturing factory in Shanghai to an unidentified Chinese company to address its mounting financial woes. The latest edition of the Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday reported the company has planned to shut down two production lines in the Shanghai factory and discussed the sale of the facility with a Chinese firm. HTC set up the 146,667m2 factory in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai in 2009 with an initial investment of NT$1.05 billion, the magazine reported.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the