Taiwan’s initial public offering (IPO) activity might slow this year compared with last year, as the number of IPOs as of the end of last month was 31, down 36 percent from the 49 registered in the same period last year, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, quoting unnamed Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) officials.
Compared with the whole of last year, this year’s IPOs might also reach a new 11-year low, the commission said, attributing the disappointing performance to fluctuations caused by international political and economic situations that have also negatively influenced new listings through IPOs in other countries, the Liberty Times reported.
Citing World Federation of Exchanges statistics, the commission said that the number of global IPOs declined 35.2 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, with declines reported across all regions.
Asia-Pacific was down 32.7 percent; North America was down 22.3 percent; and Europe, the Middle East and Africa were down 55.4 percent, it said.
In Taiwan, including the nine firms that have applied to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange or the Taipei Exchange, there might be just 40 IPOs this year, the commission said, adding that the number would be the lowest since 2009 and lower than last year’s 62.
“There is still some time before the end of the year and we will continue to work hard, but we will not solely focus on raising the IPO number without paying attention to the quality of the listing firms,” commission officials were quoted by the Liberty Times as saying.
Looking ahead, the commission said that it would continue to create a friendly capital market environment, with the aim of attracting “large companies” or “quality enterprises” to list in Taiwan, while enhancing the international competitiveness of the nation’s capital market, the Liberty Times said.
FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) and other commission officials are to brief a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee today on this year’s IPO activity, and report on the progress of two new equity trading mechanisms that are to be implemented next year.
The commission said earlier that the Taiwan Stock Exchange is slated to launch a new continuous trading mechanism on March 23, allowing buy and sell orders to be executed by traders without a lag.
Local brokerages would also be allowed to handle odd-lot intraday trading for clients from the second half of next year, making big-ticket stocks affordable to individual investors, the commission said.
NEW IDENTITY: Known for its software, India has expanded into hardware, with its semiconductor industry growing from US$38bn in 2023 to US$45bn to US$50bn India on Saturday inaugurated its first semiconductor assembly and test facility, a milestone in the government’s push to reduce dependence on foreign chipmakers and stake a claim in a sector dominated by China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened US firm Micron Technology Inc’s semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in his home state of Gujarat, hailing the “dawn of a new era” for India’s technology ambitions. “When young Indians look back in the future, they will see this decade as the turning point in our tech future,” Modi told the event, which was broadcast on his YouTube channel. The plant would convert
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RSS