Shares of motherboard maker Asrock Inc (華擎) rallied 8.4 percent during its debut on the main bourse, defying the benchmark TAIEX's 3.90 percent loss following the plunge in the US overnight on growing subprime mortgage concerns.
Asrock stock rose NT$21 to NT$271 from its listing price of NT$250 per share. The 7 percent daily limit does not apply to the trading of new shares in the first five sessions. Asrock shares were traded on the smaller Emerging Stock Market (
Asrock is a motherboard brand owned by the world's biggest motherboard maker Asustek Computer Inc (
But, the five-year-old company said last week that it planned to shift its focus to middle-range and high-end products to boost profits as growth in the low-end area slows amid rising competition from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (
SinoPac Securities Corp (
"Asrock will gain a new driving force after tapping into middle-range and high-end products, which account for 60 percent of the total unit sales of the motherboard industry," SinoPac Securities said in the report published on Monday.
Asrock plans to produce 10 percent to 15 percent more motherboards next year from this year's goal of 7 million units, based on replacement demand for the Vista system and rising demand in the emerging markets, chairman Ted Hsu (
In the first nine months of the year, Asrock's earnings inched up by nearly 4 percent to NT$1.39 billion, compared to NT$1.34 billion a year ago.
On Tuesday it said it had raised NT$2.86 billion by issuing 11.44 million new common shares during the initial public offering. Asrock now has around 102 million shares in issue.
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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