FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Reserves rise US$562m
Taiwan’s foreign-exchange reserves amounted to US$460.44 billion as of the end of last month, an increase of US$562 million from a month earlier, the central bank said yesterday. The bank attributed the gain to returns from its foreign-exchange reserves management. The market value of securities and New Taiwan dollar-based deposits held by foreign investors reached US$394.3 billion last month, equivalent to 86 percent of the overall foreign-exchange reserves, it said. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) on Thursday said ample liquidity and foreign-exchange reserves would help the nation emerge unscathed from any financial market tumult as in the past.
CHIPMAKERS
Toshiba settles dispute
Memorychip maker Marconix International Co (旺宏電子) yesterday said Toshiba Corp has agreed to pay US$40 million to settle a series of patent infringement lawsuits in Taiwan and Japan. The companies on Thursday also signed a memorandum of understanding to cross-license 30 patents, Macronix said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Last year, Marconix lodged a patent lawsuit against Toshiba and its subsidiaries, as well as its local partner Phison Electronics Corp (群聯). Before that, Toshiba had filed a complaint accusing Marconix of illegally using its patents.
CAMERA LENSES
Largan posts flat sales
Smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) yesterday reported that sales last month were nearly flat from August and grew slightly from the same month last year, despite investors’ concerns about weakening demand in the final quarter of the year. Consolidated sales were NT$5.52 billion (US$179 million) last month, the company said in a statement. Sales from July to last month totaled NT$16.35 billion, 33.03 percent higher than the previous quarter and in line with market expectations. For the year to date, the company’s cumulative sales were NT$37.51 billion, up 1.26 percent compared with the same period last year, company data showed.
CIRCUIT BOARDS
Unimicron shares fall 2.61%
Shares of printed circuit board maker Unimicron Technology Corp (欣興) yesterday fell 2.61 percent, despite its implementation of a share buyback scheme. The company plans to repurchase 50 million shares on the open market from yesterday to Dec. 4 at about NT$14 to NT$29 per share, the company said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing on Thursday. The repurchased shares would account for as much as a 3.32 percent stake in Unimicron, the company said. Unimicron shares yesterday closed at NT$18.65 in Taipei trading, having risen 14.42 percent this year. The firm reported sales of NT$7.38 billion in first eight months of the year, up 20.59 percent year-on-year.
HARNESS MAKERS
BizLink sales at US$61.49m
Wire harness maker BizLink Holding Inc (貿聯) yesterday said that its sales last month increased 18.66 percent year-on-year, but fell 7.3 percent month-on-month to US$61.49 million. The company is an exclusive harness supplier to US electric car maker Tesla Inc and has entered the supply chains of Europe’s high-end appliance brands after completing the acquisition of Leoni AG’s electrical appliance assembly business in May last year. In the first nine months of the year, BizLink’s consolidated sales were US$523.74 million, up 52.94 percent from the same period last year.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts