STOCKS
TAIEX closes up 0.16%
Shares in Taipei yesterday ended slightly higher after moving in consolidation mode throughout the session. Turnover was reduced amid lingering concerns about US-China trade tensions after new tariffs imposed by Washington and Beijing against each other’s goods took effect on Sunday, while turmoil in Hong Kong also kept many investors away from the trading floor. The TAIEX closed up 16.80 points, or 0.16 percent, at the day’s high of 10,634.85, on turnover of NT$104.833 billion (US$3.34 billion). Foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$3.93 billion of shares on the main board, the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s data showed.
INVESTMENT
Acer unit plans rights issue
Acer Cyber Security Inc (安碁資訊), a subsidiary of PC brand Acer Inc (宏碁), yesterday said that it is planning a rights issue to raise NT$204 million to strengthen its working capital ahead of its debut on the local over-the-counter market. Its board of directors has approved a plan to issue a maximum of 3.71 million new shares at NT$55 per share, it said in a statement. The company swung back into profit last year, with earnings per share of NT$4.72. Cumulative revenue in the first seven months of the year rose 27.62 percent year-on-year to NT$320 million.
EDUCATION
Teachers offered AI courses
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday announced a collaboration with the Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute (TSRI) to provide “cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI)” courses for teacher training to help nurture future professionals for the nation’s AI industry. The courses, which are based on MediaTek’s AI NeuroPilot platform and use its AI processing unit, started last week in Hsinchu and Tainan, with more than 80 participants from more than 10 universities and vocational institutions, MediaTek said. It is to also provide 30 software systems for AI platform development through the courses, a company statement said.
TOURISM
Singapore may gain from HK
Singapore’s hotels, entertainment venues and restaurants could be the prime beneficiaries of increased tourism as the Hong Kong protests rage on, DBS Bank Ltd said yesterday. The protests over the past 13 weeks have hurt the territory’s tourism sector, with visitor arrivals falling by 12 percent over June and July to about 5.2 million, the Hong Kong Tourism Board said. If 30 percent to 50 percent of travelers from key markets such as China, the UK and US now divert their trips to other Asian cities, “there could be 5-8 percent boost to monthly tourist arrivals,” with Singapore primed to reap the rewards, DBS said in a note.
TRANSPORTATION
Ai-1 Sport on sale
Motorcycle vendor Aeon Motor Co's (宏佳騰) sub-brand A Moto (宏佳騰智慧電車) released its first electric scooter, the Ai-1 Sport, which comes in five colors, on Wednesday. It uses the same motor and battery swapping system as Gogoro Inc’s (睿能創意) S2 series. The scooter features the Croxera 5 smart dashboard, that can direct riders with audio and visual guidance to the nearest battery swapping station, an a Moto official said yesterday. A Moto last month opened 12 battery swapping and repair outlets, and a bigger battery swapping station in Kaohsiung, the official said. The company is working on a second electric scooter with Gogoro, she added.
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