Investors ‘take profit and run’
Taiwanese shares closed down 1.81 percent yesterday on selling in large-cap stocks as investors took advantage of gains from the previous session, dealers said.
The weighted index dropped 119.14 points to 6,448.23 on turnover of NT$128.85 billion (US$3.94 billion).
Losers led gainers 1,268 to 886 with 167 stocks unchanged.
The weighted index opened 0.23 percent lower on profit taking and the downside extended throughout the day, with large-cap electronic stocks and financial heavyweights in focus, dealers said.
“These bellwether high-tech stocks stood behind [Thursday’s 1.63 percent] rise. It was why investors tended to take profit and run today,” Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
MOEA approves price rise
Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar, 台糖) said its plan to hike domestic wholesale prices of soybean oil products was to reflect rising international soybean prices, despite the public’s concern that the company’s move would fuel domestic inflation.
State-run Taisugar said in a statement yesterday that it had obtained the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ approval to raise the wholesale prices on an 18-liter barrel of soybean oil by 19.1 percent to NT$655 from NT$550.
Taisugar said the new price was still lower than a reasonable market price of NT$700 and it did not expect the change would have big impact on domestic consumers, citing the products’ small market share.
Taisugar’s soybean oil products account for around 7 percent to 8 percent in domestic market, which is far lower than those enjoyed by its bigger rivals such as Taisun Enterprise Co (泰山企業).
Fubon expands to Hanoi
To expand its services to Vietnam-based Taiwanese businesses, Fubon Insurance Co (富邦產險), a subsidiary under Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), yesterday branched into Hanoi from its Vietnamese headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City.
The non-life insurer plans to further expand its presence in the country by branching into Dong Nai and BinhDuong provinces, the company said in a press statement yesterday.
Parent Fubon Financial also plans to expand its banking footprint there after opening a bank branch in Ho Chi Minh City last June, the statement said.
The financial service provider’s banking subsidiary plans to set up a liaison office in Hanoi late next month after having received a go-ahead from the regulators, the statement said.
US to allow longan imports
After seven years of negotiations, Washington has approved Taiwan’s application to export fresh longans to all of the US except Florida, Taiwan’s representative office in the Washington said on Thursday.
According to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwanese fresh longans (Euphoria longana), after having been stored for 17 days at temperatures less than 1ºC or for 20 days at less than 1.38ºC, will be allowed into the US beginning next Saturday, one day after US regulations detailing quarantine conditions for the exports from Taiwan take effect.
This will make longans the fourth Taiwan-produced fruit to be sold in the US after lychees, star fruit and mangoes, said a Taiwanese official stationed in Washington.
NT dollar weakens slightly
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.002 to close at NT$32.8.
A total of US$573 million changed hands.
NEW IDENTITY: Known for its software, India has expanded into hardware, with its semiconductor industry growing from US$38bn in 2023 to US$45bn to US$50bn India on Saturday inaugurated its first semiconductor assembly and test facility, a milestone in the government’s push to reduce dependence on foreign chipmakers and stake a claim in a sector dominated by China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened US firm Micron Technology Inc’s semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in his home state of Gujarat, hailing the “dawn of a new era” for India’s technology ambitions. “When young Indians look back in the future, they will see this decade as the turning point in our tech future,” Modi told the event, which was broadcast on his YouTube channel. The plant would convert
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RSS