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.
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
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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