Large-cap stocks fuel rebound
Large-cap stocks led local shares on a technical rebound yesterday as investors took advantage of low valuations after recent heavy losses, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed up 110.10 points, or 1.55 percent, at 7,181.77, after moving between 7,085.34 and 7,182.99, on turnover of NT$65.66 billion (US$2.02 billion).
The market opened 0.88 percent higher on bargain hunting and the momentum extended until the end of the session as investors bought into market heavyweights, encouraged by gains posted by other markets in the region such as Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, dealers said.
Asian credit purchases rise
Asian Visa cardholders swiped their cards to pay for purchases worth more than US$1 trillion in the 12 months before March, which represents a 13.2 percent growth year-on-year, Visa Inc said yesterday.
That showed the region’s economic conditions have greatly improved, with Southeastern Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, seeing significant growth in spending via Visa credit cards, the card issuer said in a press statement.
At the same time, the volume of transactions made via Visa cards grew from 8.6 billion to 9.8 billion, which reflects the prevalence of consumers using credit cards as an electronic purse to replace the use of cash and bank checks, the statement added.
Globally, overseas spending by Visa cardholders grew 12 percent year-on-year in the first three months of this year as a result of increases in outbound travel, its statement added.
Ten-year bonds sold at auction
The government sold NT$40 billion (US$1.2 billion) of 10-year bonds at a yield of 1.457 percent in an auction yesterday, the central bank said in a statement.
The sale of the securities maturing in March 2020 attracted bids for 1.55 times the amount of debt on offer, the central bank said.
The government last sold 10-year bonds in March, at a yield of 1.399 percent. That offer garnered a bid-to-cover ratio of 1.8 times.
Airline revenues jump
China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, posted NT$12.14 billion in revenue last month, up 7.7 percent from April and up 74.47 percent from a year earlier, while EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) saw sales rise 5.22 percent last month from April and increase 73.17 percent year-on-year.
“The two carriers are benefiting from strong demand for air links across the Taiwan Strait,” Taiwan International Securities Corp (金鼎證券) analyst Michael Chiang said yesterday.
He said recent fare hikes in cargo transportation on routes to Europe also lifted sales at the two carriers.
Price-drop hits Chimei Innolux
Flat-panel maker Chimei Innolux Corp’s (奇美電子) sales value for last month was affected by falling product prices, while sales volume of its large panels recorded a mild increase compared with April.
The company on Wednesday posted NT$49.68 billion in sales for last month. Although the figure was down 0.5 percent from April, shipments of large panels, the company’s major products, rose 3 percent month-on-month to 11.75 million units. Large panels are defined as those 10 inches (25.4cm) or above and are used in TVs, desktop computers and notebook computers.
NT dollar gains ground
The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, rising NT$0.03 to close at NT$32.490. Turnover was US$986 million during the trading session.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS