Shares in solar cell makers soared yesterday after oil prices continued breaking records on global markets in the wake of the latest industry figures showing a surprise fall in US crude reserves.
Shares of Motech Industries Inc (
US light crude rose as high as US$96.24 in trading yesterday morning in Asia before falling back to US$96.05.
On average, solar shares grew 0.39 percent yesterday, outperforming a 0.78 percent decline in the over-the-counter GRETAI Securities Market index and a 1.17 percent drop in the benchmark TAIEX index.
The TAIEX yesterday tumbled 113.14 points to 9,598.23 as investors worried that "higher costs could eventually choke economic growth," SinoPac Securities Co (
Shares of Motech also gained support from the release of sales figures for last month.
The company yesterday posted record sales of NT$1.44 billion (US$44.4 million) for last month, up 55 percent from a year ago and a 2 percent increase from September.
For the first 10 months, the company's revenues jumped 111.2 percent year-on-year to NT$12.55 billion, the company's figures showed.
Last week, Motech disappointed investors as it reported that its gross margin had fallen to 17.5 percent in the third quarter -- from 18.5 percent in the second quarter and more than 20 percent in the first quarter -- owing to rising raw materials prices caused by a persistent shortage.
Motech president Simon Tsuo (
Rival E-ton also saw its third-quarter gross margin edge down to 13.63 percent, the lowest since the company started trading its shares on the GRETAI Securities Market in March last year.
E-ton said its fourth-quarter margin would improve after it began to get silicon wafer supplies from Adema Technologies last month.
E-ton had acquired Adema Technologies, a US-based manufacturer of solar power parts, in June.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
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