BANKING
Investors cut yuan holdings
The nation’s yuan deposits fell to the lowest level in 14 months as investors cut yuan holdings for fear of a slowdown in China’s economy and potential debt defaults in Chinese corporations, according to the latest central bank data. Yuan deposits declined for a second consecutive month to 314.32 billion yuan (US$48.56 billion) last month, a reduction of 2.5 billion yuan, or 0.79 percent from February, the central bank said in a statement yesterday. Yuan deposits at lenders’ domestic banking units (DBU) totaled 272.86 billion yuan last month, falling by 1.17 billion yuan from February, the central bank said. Yuan deposits at lenders’ offshore banking units (OBU) reached 41.46 billion yuan, down 1.34 billion yuan from the previous month, the central bank said. However, remittances hit 132.09 billion yuan last month, up 25.33 percent from February, when yuan activity tends to be lower, as the Lunar New Year holiday reduced the number of working days, the central bank said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Materials markets is biggest
The nation is expected to retain the world’s largest semiconductor material market this year, although sales in Taiwan contracted by 2 percent last year, a global industry association said yesterday. Last year, sales of semiconductor materials in Taiwan amounted to US$9.41 billion, down from US$9.6 billion in the previous year, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) said in a statement. However, sales in South Korea rose 2 percent to US$7.16 billion and those in China also increased 2 percent to US$6.12 billion, SEMI said. The total sales of the global semiconductor material market declined 1.5 percent last year from the previous year to US$43.4 billion, it said.
SCOOTERS
Gogoro has 92% share
Electric scooter vendor Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) on Thursday said its market share for electric scooters in the greater Taipei area reached 92 percent last month, and that it is planning on tapping into another city in Taiwan in the middle of this year. The company declined to say which city, as it is still under discussion. However, Gogoro said its existing partners, such as 7-Eleven and Hi-Life convenience stores would continue providing spaces for its battery-swapping stations in the new city. At present, Gogoro operates 12 brick-and-mortar stores and 175 battery-swapping stations in Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu. The company sold 1,884 scooters in the first quarter, compared with 765 units of China Motor Corp’s (中華汽車) E-moving 100 electric scooters.
FOOTWEAR
Pou Chen revenue up 7.7%
Footwear manufacturer Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業) this week said its revenue rose 7.7 percent annually to NT$22.69 billion last month, boosting the company’s cumulative revenue for the first quarter to increase 8.3 percent to NT$67.44 billion from NT$62.27 billion in the same quarter a year ago. The company attributed the strong quarterly increase mainly to higher contribution from its subsidiary — Hong-Kong-listed Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings Ltd (裕元工業). Yue Yuen, in which Pou Chen owns a 49.98 percent stake, reported revenue last quarter rose 3.1 percent annually to US$2.03 billion from US$1.97 billion on the back of sales growth in its shoe manufacturing and distribution business, Pou Chen said in a statement issued on Monday.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
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