Powerchip sales rebound
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s No. 2 computer memory-chip maker, yesterday said sales for last month rebounded almost 80 percent on recovering demand for its chips.
Powerchip’s sales for last month rose to NT$2.64 billion (US$80.4 million), up 79 percent from NT$1.48 billion in July. That represents an annual decline of about 48 percent as prices plunged on oversupply and sluggish demand.
Powerchip spokesman Eric Tang (譚仲民) said the company was increasing output to cope with a gradual recovery in PC sales.
Meanwhile, Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s top computer memory-chip manufacturer, said on Tuesday it planned to raise prices for mainstream DDR2 chips by 10 percent in October from September.
TAIEX run predicted for Q4
Taiwanese stocks are “positioned for a fourth-quarter run” as investors focus on a recovery in demand and a proposed tax on overseas earnings encourages citizens to repatriate funds, adding to liquidity, Deutsche Bank AG said.
Almost NT$100 billion of “retail money may get reallocated from offshore funds to onshore funds that are exposed to the TAIEX,” Deutsche Bank analyst Julian Wang wrote in a report yesterday.
NT$213 billion was withdrawn from time deposit accounts in the first half of the year and “most of it found its way into the equity market,” he said.
CPC inviting bids for bonds
State-owned oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油), is inviting bids for NT$9 billion in bonds to help pay for investment.
The company plans to sell NT$5 billion in five-year notes, NT$2 billion in seven-year debt and NT$2 billion in 10-year securities, with the option to increase the total amount by as much as 30 percent, CPC vice president Lin Maw-wen (林茂文) said yesterday.
“We will use the money on investment,” Lin said.
The planned sale will be the refiner’s only bond issuance this year, he said.
CPC expects to spend NT$43.4 billion on fixed assets next year, according to the government’s draft budget for next year.
Projects include upgrades on refineries, construction of a petrochemical plant and development of a gas field off Taiwan, Lin said.
CPC and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), Taiwan’s only oil refiners, also have units that process naphtha, an oil product, into ethylene for making plastics and fibers.
NT dollar pares strong gain
The New Taiwan dollar weakened yesterday, paring its biggest daily gain in a month, on speculation declines in global stocks will prompt overseas investors to trim holdings of emerging-market assets. Bonds were little changed.
The NT dollar dropped last month on concern the central bank will cap appreciation to support exports, which have slumped for 11 straight months. The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index of regional shares slipped 1.5 percent today, the most in two weeks, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 2.2 percent yesterday.
The Taiwanese currency is “on the weaker side, in line with other Asian currencies,” said Suan Teck Kin, an economist in Singapore at United Overseas Bank Ltd. “The situation in terms of recovery is not yet entrenched.”
The currency fell 0.2 percent to NT$32.918 versus the greenback as of the 4pm close, according to Taipei Forex Inc. It rose 0.2 percent on Thursday, the most since Aug. 4.
Indonesia’s rupiah, the Philippine peso and Malaysia’s ringgit also weakened.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
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