EQUITIES
TAIEX closes higher
Local shares yesterday closed higher, but the upturn was limited because of technical resistance and lingering concerns over trade frictions between the US and China. Investors sold off large-cap stocks in the bellwether electronics sector later in the session, forcing the broader market to give up most of its early gains, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 14.30 points, or 0.14 percent, at 10,398.41 on turnover of NT$106.001 billion (US$3.38 billion). Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$4.36 billion of shares, compared with a net sell of NT$10.45 billion on Friday last week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
INVESTMENT
Minister eyeing NT$100bn
Local businesses with overseas operations are expected to pour at least NT$100 billion into the domestic economy before the end of the year, Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) said yesterday. At a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee, Shen said he expects NT$400 billion to be invested over the next three years. So far this year, 55 Taiwanese companies have pledged to invest NT$288.4 billion in the nation, which would create jobs and boost the local economy, the ministry said last week.
SCOOTERS
Electric models double
The nation manufactured a record 91,000 electric scooters last year, almost double the number in 2017, the Ministry of Economic Affairs reported last week. The number has been on the rise since 2014, when only 5,062 scooters were manufactured, and it increased to 50,183 in 2017, the ministry said. The government in 2016 began offering incentives for people to replace gasoline-powered scooters with electric models, which helped push up the total number of scooters sold in the nation to 1.1 million in 2017, but the number dropped to 947,000 last year, the ministry said.
GAMING
Switch boosts local firms
Nvidia Corp’s comments last week about a positive outlook for Nintendo Co’s Switch gaming machine and gaming laptops are boding well for companies in the supply chain in the coming quarters, including chipmaker Macronix International Co Ltd (旺宏電子) and sensor maker PixArt Imaging Inc (原相科技), as well as gaming computer developers Micro-Star International Co (微星科技) and Gigabyte Technology Corp (技嘉科技), Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said yesterday. The US-based maker of video game graphics chips last week reported better-than-expected profit for the first quarter and said the inventories situation had improved.
PANEL MAKERS
Rescue package in doubt
Japan Display Inc, a struggling supplier of screens for Apple Inc’s iPhone, needs to find an additional investor to get a ¥80 billion (US$727 million) rescue package from a group of Taiwanese and Chinese firms, the Asahi newspaper reported. Negotiations with the consortium will not advance until an extra source of capital is found, Asahi said, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. Japan Display on Saturday said in a statement that there was no truth to the report, without elaborating. The new investor, which would have to invest tens of billions of yen, is necessary because the backers have discovered that Japan Display is in far worse shape than was estimated when the infusion was first announced last month, the report 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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained