Electronics leads index higher
Taiwanese shares closed up 0.6 percent yesterday, recovering from earlier losses after a rebound in the electronics sector, dealers said. The weighted index rose 35.04 points to 5,892.68 on turnover of NT$148.97 billion (US$4.42 billion).
Gainers outnumbered losers by 1,222 to 908, with 134 stocks unchanged.
Electronics rose 1.28 percent and financials added 0.41 percent, while steel fell 0.42 percent.
Analysts said gains in big-cap electronics firms helped boost the market, but added that they expected it to stay between 5,650 and 5,950 for the rest of the week.
“Risk appetite remains high, but there is a growing sense that we probably aren’t going to go far from here,” said Tom Tang, assistant vice president at Masterlink Investment Advisory.
TMC to submit business plan
The government-led Taiwan Memory Co (TMC, 台灣記憶體公司) is scheduled to submit its business plan to the National Development Fund at the end of this month, Industrial Development Bureau director-general Woody Duh (杜紫軍) said yesterday.
But the development fund’s investment in TMC will be lower than its prior estimate of NT$30 billion (US$890 million), Duh said.
TMC head John Hsuan (宣明智) said on April 1 that the company planned to submit its business plan in the middle of this month and finalize the establishment of TMC within the first half of this year.
TMC is in talks with Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc over the details of a technology cooperation.
Acer optimistic on hitting No. 1
Acer Inc (宏碁) may overtake Hewlett-Packard Co as the world’s largest laptop vendor ahead of its 2011 target, bolstered by sales of low-cost netbooks and low-power notebooks, Acer chairman Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) said in an interview.
As the company’s competitors in the netbook segment were quite “passive” and with Acer leading the competition by “six to nine months in the notebook segment, we expect to achieve our target of becoming the No. 1 notebook vendor sooner,” Wang said yesterday.
He declined to specify when he expected Acer to surpass Hewlett-Packard in laptop shipments.
Acer last week unveiled its Timeline laptop. The company expects to sell between 12 million and 15 million Aspire One netbooks this year and between 7 million and 10 million Timeline laptops. The company expects to boost total notebook shipments by as much as 35 percent from the 20 million it sold last year, Wang said.
HSBC favors Taiwan, Russia
Emerging-market equity investors should increase holdings in Russia and Taiwan, while reducing positions in China and Egypt, HSBC Holdings PLC said.
Russian and Taiwanese shares were raised to “overweight” from “neutral,” John Lomax, HSBC’s head of equity strategy for global emerging markets, wrote in a note yesterday. The London-based strategist downgraded his ratings on Chinese and Egyptian stocks to “neutral” from “overweight.”
Meanwhile, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (日月光半導體), the world’s largest chip packaging and testing firm, and Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), Taiwan’s second-largest, were cut to “neutral” from “buy” at UBS AG, which said the shares had factored in the outlook for recovery.
NT dollar advances
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.077 to close at NT$33.620. Turnover was US$867 million.
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