TAIEX rises to one-month high
Taiwanese shares closed up 0.98 percent yesterday to a one-month high on strong buying in technology, financial and property stocks, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 65.31 points to 6,715.22 on turnover of NT$127.74 billion (US$3.99 billion), the highest since the June 6 close of 6,856.74.
Gainers led losers 1,447 to 797 with 159 stocks unchanged.
“Financial stocks have become the buying targets, given the current lack of mainstream leaders in the market,” KGI Securities (凱基證券) trader Bill Huang said.
The financial sector edged up 0.9 percent, led by news that investment bank China Development Financial Holdings Corp (中華開發金控) booked a disposal gain of about NT$860 million from selling its stake in Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓公司), operator of the Taipei 101 skyscraper.
AUO’s June sales rose 9.6%
AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the world’s third-biggest maker of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels, yesterday said that sales last month reached their highest in eight months, another sign of recovery from the industry’s worst downturn.
Last month, AUO posted NT$30.4 billion (US$922 million) in revenues, up 9.6 percent from NT$27.7 billion in May. On an annual basis, however, sales were down 17.3 percent.
Second-quarter sales reached NT$82.5 billion, up 62.6 percent from the first quarter. Compared with the same period last year, they were down 33.2 percent.
Shipments of PC and TV panels jumped more than 70 percent quarter-on-quarter to 22.41 million units in the April-to-June quarter, surpassing the company’s estimate of a 50 percent increase made in late April.
AUO said shipments last month were limited by a shortage of glass substrates.
Quanta loses patent suit
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), the world’s largest maker of notebook computers, must pay US$52 million for infringing a patent covering technology for identifying the type of disk inserted into a disk drive, a jury said.
The federal jury in Marshall, Texas, deliberated about four hours on Monday before finding Quanta willfully infringed the patent of LaserDynamics and awarded the damages.
Based in Kanagawa-Ken, Japan, LaserDynamics sued in 2006, claiming Quanta and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) imported and sold DVD players that used its patent. Asustek earlier settled with LaserDynamics.
Quanta said it would appeal the verdict.
Energy use drops in May
The nation’s energy consumption declined for the 11th straight month in May because of reduced demand from manufacturers amid the global recession.
Consumption of coal, petroleum, gas, thermal energy and electricity dropped 10 percent from a year earlier to the equivalent of 9.61 million kiloliters of oil, or about 1.95 million barrels a day, the Bureau of Energy said in an e-mailed report yesterday.
Industrial users slashed energy use by 14 percent, it said.
Consumption of petroleum products fell 6.4 percent from a year earlier to the equivalent of 4.47 million kiloliters of oil in May, the bureau said.
Natural gas use dropped 2.1 percent to 110.2 million cubic meters and coal consumption declined 12 percent to 5.06 million tonnes, it said.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar declined NT$0.001 to close at NT$32.989 against the US dollar on turnover of US$827 million at the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday.
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
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