MACHINERY
FTC approves merger
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday gave the green light to Hitachi Ltd’s planned acquisition of Yungtay Engineering Co (永大), saying the merger would not hinder competition. The commission said it made its decision based on Section 13 of the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法). The Japanese company in October last year said that it planned to acquire all of Yungtay’s shares sold on the Taiwan Stock Exchange through its subsidiary Taiwan Hitachi Elevator Co (台灣日立電梯). The commission said that the two parties sell elevator-related products through their own brands and provide components for assembly as well as repair services. With numerous players in the field, competition would remain intense on both ends of the market and the merger should not a pose a threat to the current balance, it said.
ELECTRONICS
Delta approves land purchase
Delta Electronics Co’s (台達) board of directors yesterday approved a NT$2.57 billion (US$83.3 million) plan to purchase land and buildings in Taoyuan’s Jhongli District (中壢). The land covers 32,153m2 and the buildings have a total floor area of 40,950m2, Delta said. The new fixed assets are to serve as the company’s fifth point of sales in Jhongli, next to another plot that it purchased last year for NT$2.1 billion, it said. Delta last year also spent NT$1 billion for a plot in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) to expand its headquarters, and research and development center. The company reported revenue of NT$20.16 billion last month, up 33 percent from February’s NT$15.16 billion.
SCOOTER MAKERS
Kwang Yang names directors
Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽工業), the nation’s largest manufacturer of gasoline-powered scooters, yesterday said that it has named former HTC Corp (宏達電) marketing officer John Wang (王景弘) and Gary Ting (丁學文) as new board directors. The company’s board is comprised of 18 members. Wang and Ting are to help draft strategies to boost the company’s presence in the electric scooter market, Kwang Yang said in a statement yesterday. Ting is head of the company’s fund, KYMCO Capital (金庫資本). Kwang Yang shareholders also approved a plan to distribute a cash dividend of NT$2.5 per common share. Last year, the company sold 483,750 scooters, with a market share of 37.5 percent. It posted revenue of NT$28.8 billion for last year.
EQUITIES
Large-cap stocks boost bourse
The TAIEX yesterday rose from a session earlier as the bellwether electronics sector continued its momentum led by large-cap stocks, although the gains were limited to less than 11,000 points, dealers said. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract electronics maker and also one of the local tech heavyweights, attracted buying interest on the hope that chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) will run for president next year, the dealers said. A deal reached overnight between Apple Inc and smartphone chip designer Qualcomm Inc to drop litigation against each other also lent support to their suppliers in Taiwan, they added. The TAIEX ended up 69.41 points, or 0.64 percent, at 10,997.26, on turnover of NT$166.689 billion. Buying in Hon Hai spread to other firms under the corporate umbrella of Hon Hai Group (鴻海團), while the settlement between Qualcomm and Apple sparked interest in other large-cap tech stocks, such as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the dealers said.
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