Shares up 0.17 percent
Shares closed 0.17 percent higher yesterday with late profit-taking shaving gains made on hopes for a US interest rate cut when the Federal Reserve meets next week, dealers said.
Investors in early trade followed the pace set by Wall Street but technical resistance halted the market's rise and prompted investors to take profits before trading ended, they said.
The TAIEX closed up 15 points at 9,018.12, off a high of 9,084.97 and a low of 9,011.26. Turnover was NT$134.25 billion (US$4.07 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 892 to 844, with 256 stocks unchanged.
Macronix building new factory
Macronix International Co (旺宏電子), which makes chips for customers including Nintendo Co, said it is considering building a new semiconductor factory.
Chairman Miin Wu (吳敏求), who spoke to reporters in Taipei yesterday, declined to elaborate on details such as the timing or the investment amount.
The Hsinchu-based company said in May it was in talks with Qimonda AG to jointly develop flash memory chips.
Epistar at six-week high on TSE
Epistar Corp (晶元光電), the nation's largest maker of light-emitting diodes (LED) used in mobile phones, climbed to a six-week high on the Taipei stock exchange after the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported LED demand was outstripping supply.
The company's shares jumped by the 7 percent daily limit to NT$161.50, closing at their highest level since July 31.
Epistar's production capacity trails orders by 30 percent to 40 percent, the newspaper reported, citing Lee Biing-jye (李秉傑), chairman of the Hsinchu-based company. The shortage could last until April, the report said.
LEDs are used as backlights in screens of mobile phones, laptop computers, flat-screen TVs and traffic lights. This week, Epistar reported last month sales rose 69 percent to NT$955 million.
Taipower hires new engineers
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said it hired E&C Engineering Corp to supply engineers and provide other staff after a Shaw Group Inc subsidiary ended its contract to advise on construction of the country's fourth nuclear power plant.
E&C Engineering, a unit of Taipei-based CTCI Corp (中鼎工程), has sent 60 engineers and 10 clerks to assist Taipower, Tu Yueh-yuan (杜悅元), the state-run utility's chief engineer, said by telephone.
Taipower's fourth nuclear power plant is 68 percent complete and is intended to help ease an electricity shortage in the north. Stone & Webster Inc has provided design and engineering support for the plant scheduled to start in 2009. The Taipei-based utility's employees will take over much of the work that needs to done in the wake of the Shaw Group unit's departure.
Foxconn misses profit goal
Foxconn International Holdings Ltd (富士康控股), the world's biggest contract manufacturer of mobile phones, fell to its lowest point in more than a year in Hong Kong trading after posting first-half profit that missed analysts' estimates.
Foxconn shares declined 3.9 percent to HK$19.46 (US$2.50), the lowest close since Aug. 24 last year. The Shenzhen-based company yesterday reported first-half profit rose 7.4 percent to US$324 million, missing the median estimate of US$370 million of three analysts.
The company's earnings fell after sales slumped at Motorola Inc, its biggest customer. Foxconn, the worst-performing stock on the Hang Seng Index this year after it doubled last year, seeks more orders from Nokia Oyj and Sony Ericsson Communications Ltd to cut its reliance on the US company.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
Video streaming giant Netflix is launching a talent cultivation program in Taiwan aimed at producing high-quality Mandarin content, the company announced in a press release on Thursday. Netflix Chinese language content head Maya Huang (黃怡玫) said that Netflix has long invested in the Taiwanese market, citing the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity launched last year as an example. The fund would continue to dedicate resources to discovering content with the potential to be developed into Chinese-language projects, she added. The financing for the new talent projects seeks to create an ecosystem for content creators and professional development programs, she said. The talent projects
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a
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