EQUITIES
Local shares rebound
Led by the bellwether electronics sector, local shares staged a technical rebound yesterday after plummeting a day earlier. However, turnover remained moderate as many investors remained on the sidelines waiting to see how the trade dispute between the US and China plays out after US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods. The TAIEX closed up 90.02 points, or 0.83 percent, at 10,987.14 on turnover of NT$111.665 billion (US$3.61 billion). Foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$160.25 million of shares on the main board after selling a net NT$13.96 billion on Monday.
INVESTMENTS
Foreign holdings increase
The holdings of Taiwanese equities, bonds and New Taiwan dollar-denominated deposits by foreign investors totaled US$385.9 billion last month, an increase of US$5.1 billion from the previous month, the central bank said on Monday. The increase in foreign-held assets mainly reflected a fund inflow to purchase local shares, the central bank said. Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed that foreign fund inflows were about US$3.76 billion last month, compared with US$1.75 billion in March, with cumulative fund inflows totaling US$11.87 billion for the first four months, the commission said on Monday.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Reserves hit new high
Foreign-exchange reserves at the end of last month hit a new high for the sixth consecutive month, mainly on the back of an increase in returns from the central bank’s investment portfolio, although the weakness of the euro offset some of those investment gains, the central bank said on Monday. Foreign-exchange reserves were US$464.83 billion last month, up US$750 million from the previous month, making Taiwan’s the fifth-largest reserves in the world after China’s US$3.99 trillion, Japan’s US$1.23 trillion, Switzerland’s US$759.6 billion and Saudi Arabia’s US$489 billion, the central bank said.
MANUFACTURING
Revenue hits five-year high
Listed companies in the manufacturing industry reported combined revenue of NT$16.89 trillion last year, a five-year high, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Monday. The industry’s revenue grew 2.5 percent year-on-year, driven by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) and Pegatron Corp (和碩), with combined sales of NT$4.1 trillion, the ministry said. Total net profit of listed manufacturers rose 1.4 percent year-on-year to NT$1.51 trillion last year, with the electronic components industry’s contribution the biggest at NT$608.4 billion. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) net profit of NT$351.1 billion accounted for 23.2 percent of the manufacturing industry’s profit, followed by Hon Hai’s NT$129.1 billion and Formosa Petrochemical Corp’s (台塑石化) NT$60.1 billion.
ENERGY
Green contracts reviewed
State-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is reviewing its contracts with green energy providers in a bid to meet demand, a Ministry of Economic Affairs official said. Taipower is seeking legal advice on whether it can renegotiate the terms of its contracts with green energy suppliers, particularly those signed before the 2017 Electricity Act (電業法), which limits companies to selling their electricity only to Taipower, the official said on Sunday. If Taipower can resell its stored green energy, it would help meet demand in the business sector, the official 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
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
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],”
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