Investors stay on sidelines
Taiwanese share prices closed little changed yesterday, with many investors on the sidelines amid lingering domestic political concerns, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed down 10.68 points or 0.13 percent at 8,156.39, off a low of 8,071.63 and high of 8,173.90. Turnover was NT$64.52 billion (US$1.99 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 1,131 to 716, while 526 stocks were unchanged. A total of 18 stocks closed limit-up, while 35 were limit-down.
Dutch port outdoes Kaohsiung
Rotterdam Port has replaced Kaohsiung Harbor as the world's sixth-busiest container port, the Kaohsiung Harbor management said yesterday.
"Rotterdam Port announced in November that its 2007 container volume has hit 10 million TEUs [twenty-foot equivalent unit]. Kaohsiung Harbor reached the 10 million TEU target only on December 24," said Huang Kuo-ying (黃國英), deputy director of the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau.
Although 10 million TEU is an annual record for Kaohsiung, it faces an uphill battle to maintain its competitiveness because cross-strait transshipment containers -- which account for half of the containers passing through the harbor -- are dwindling.
In the first 11 months this year, it handled 9.3 million TUEs, of which 4.8 million were transshipment containers from China's Fuzhou and Xiamen ports.
"But cross-strait transshipment containers dropped 5.4 percent between January and November because China has expanded the Xiamen Port and built deep-water container terminals there, so export containers can be loaded onto container ships there and no longer need to be shipped to Kaohsiung and then re-shipped to other countries," Huang said.
Yet Huang said he still remains optimistic about Kaohsiung Harbor's performance next year.
Shin Kong Financial shares fall
Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) shares dropped yesterday after it announced a writedown of investments related to US subprime loans.
The company said its life insurance unit, Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), will incur a loss of US$57.7 million in collateralized debt obligations.
The life insurance unit will book the loss in the fourth quarter, the firm said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange late on Tuesday.
Economy may rise 4.23 percent
The nation's economy is expected to grow 4.23 percent next year, after rising 5.29 percent this year, the Taiwan Research Institute (台灣綜合研究院) forecast yesterday.
The projected 4.23 percent increase for next year would be lower than an average growth of 4.38 percent between 1997 and last year, the Taipei-based institute said at a press briefing.
Wu Tsai-yi (吳再益), vice president of the institute, said that exports, domestic investment and private consumption would see slower growth next year because of concerns over the US credit crunch and high oil prices.
Exports are expected to grow 3.96 percent year-on-year next year, the weakest performance in the last three years, the institute said.
Private investment is likely to grow 4.12 percent and private consumption could increase 2.92 percent next year, the institute said.
Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), the institute's president, said he was more optimistic about the stock market's performance next year compared with this year, but added that the referendums in March would be a key variable.
NT dollar declines
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange on Wednesday, declining NT$0.03 to close at NT$32.529. Turnover totaled US$590 million.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) investment project in Arizona has progressed better than expected, but it still faces challenges such as water and labor shortages, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Yeh Chun-hsien (葉俊顯) said yesterday. Speaking with reporters after visiting TSMC’s Arizona hub and attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Maryland last week, Yeh said TSMC’s Arizona site turned a profit of NT$16.14 billion (US$514 million) last year in its first full year of mass production. “TSMC told me it was surprised by the smooth trial run of the first fab, which has left the company optimistic about the project’s outlook,”
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