TAIEX falls on Wall Street woes
Shares closed down 1.17 percent yesterday on uncertainty over the US government’s massive bank bailout plan, dealers said.
The weighted index fell 71.77 points to 6,060.83 on turnover of NT$73.01 billion (US$2.28 billion). Decliners outnumbered gainers 1,232 to 490, with 363 stocks unchanged. A total of 34 stocks closed limit-up, while 36 were limit-down.
Music download option offered
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) unveiled a new music downloading service yesterday as part of its greater efforts to offset falling voice revenues.
It is offering more than 10,000 Chinese and English songs for cellphone users to download to use as ring tones, or for other uses, by singing the song to the phone instead of entering the songs’ codes on the phones’ keypads.
Chunghwa Telecom said it has raised the revenue target from music downloading for this year to NT$7 billion from NT$6.5 billion for this year as voice revenues declined.
Downloads are the second-largest value-added-service used by subscribers, after short messages, making about 20 percent of the total value-added-service revenues, the company said.
Chunghwa Telecom aims to make NT$75 billion revenues this year, with 10 percent coming from value-added services.
BenQ sees sales dropping
BenQ Corp (明基), the branded electronics subsidiary of Taiwan’s Qisda Corp (佳世達), said sales this year will be 15 percent less than earlier forecast because of a worldwide economic slowdown.
“The slowing global economy is really hurting demand, especially in Western Europe which accounts for 30 to 40 percent of our sales,” BenQ president Conway Lee (李文德) said yesterday.
The company had previously forecast sales of NT$80 billion this year, climbing to NT$100 billion next year.
Short-selling ban pays off
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday that its ban imposed last weekend on short selling of the shares of 150 companies below their closing prices had effectively restrained stock declines.
The volumes of short selling by lending securities between Monday and Wednesday fell below its monthly average, FSC Vice Chairman Wu Tang-chieh (吳當傑) told a media briefing.
Wu said that this month’s averaged volume of short selling by securities lending accounted for 0.89 percent of the TAIEX’s daily turnover. But such volumes dropped significantly to 0.22 percent on Monday, 0.43 percent on Tuesday and 0.25 percent on Wednesday, he said.
Wu said short selling for all TAIEX shares is banned.
Asset quality improving
New statistics showed that asset quality improved slightly last month, with the bad-loan ratio declining to 1.53 percent from 1.54 percent in July, the FSC said yesterday.
As of last month, 37 domestic banks had granted NT$18.28 trillion in loans, up NT$66.6 billion from July. Of those loans, NT$280.2 billion turned non-performing, the commission said in a statement.
Of the 37 banks, 29 banks had a bad-loan ratio of below 2.5 percent and another 6 banks’ ratio ranged between 2.5 percent and 5 percent, while Chinfon Commercial Bank (慶豐銀行) continued to hold the highest ratio of 29.26 percent, followed by Cosmos Bank Taiwan’s (萬泰銀行) 5.05 percent, the FSC said.
NT dollar slides
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, falling NT$0.037 to close at NT$31.998. Turnover was US$1.05 billion.
Anna Bhobho, a 31-year-old housewife from rural Zimbabwe, was once a silent observer in her home, excluded from financial and family decisionmaking in the deeply patriarchal society. Today, she is a driver of change in her village, thanks to an electric tricycle she owns. In many parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa, women have long been excluded from mainstream economic activities such as operating public transportation. However, three-wheelers powered by green energy are reversing that trend, offering financial opportunities and a newfound sense of importance. “My husband now looks up to me to take care of a large chunk of expenses,
SECTOR LEADER: TSMC can increase capacity by as much as 20 percent or more in the advanced node part of the foundry market by 2030, an analyst said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to lead its peers in the advanced 2-nanometer process technology, despite competition from Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, TrendForce Corp analyst Joanne Chiao (喬安) said. TSMC’s sophisticated products and its large production scale are expected to allow the company to continue dominating the global 2-nanometer process market this year, Chiao said. The world’s largest contract chipmaker is scheduled to begin mass production of chips made on the 2-nanometer process in its Hsinchu fab in the second half of this year. It would also hold a ceremony on Monday next week to
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday signed a letter of intent with Alaska Gasline Development Corp (AGDC), expressing an interest to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) and invest in the latter’s Alaska LNG project, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. Under the agreement, CPC is to participate in the project’s upstream gas investment to secure stable energy resources for Taiwan, the ministry said. The Alaska LNG project is jointly promoted by AGDC and major developer Glenfarne Group LLC, as Alaska plans to export up to 20 million tonnes of LNG annually from 2031. It involves constructing an 1,290km
NEXT GENERATION: The company also showcased automated machines, including a nursing robot called Nurabot, which is to enter service at a Taichung hospital this year Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) expects server revenue to exceed its iPhone revenue within two years, with the possibility of achieving this goal as early as this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said on Tuesday at Nvidia Corp’s annual technology conference in San Jose, California. AI would be the primary focus this year for the company, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), as rapidly advancing AI applications are driving up demand for AI servers, Liu said. The production and shipment of Nvidia’s GB200 chips and the anticipated launch of GB300 chips in the second half of the year would propel
RSS