TAIEX little changed
Taiwan’s benchmark index closed little changed yesterday after concerns over the country’s global competitiveness amid a rising New Taiwan dollar eroded early gains on follow-through buying, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 3.84 points or 0.04 percent to end at 8,740.43, after moving between 8,717.53 and 8,789.25, on turnover of NT$145.89 billion (US$4.86 billion).
The market opened up 0.40 percent and moved to the day’s high on ample liquidity, but sentiment turned sour as investors witnessed the New Taiwan dollar extend its gains and breach the NT$30.00 level against the US dollar, the dealers said.
A total of 1,738 stocks closed up and 2,630 were down, with 330 remaining unchanged.
MStar scheduled to list
MStar Semiconductor Inc (晨星半導體), a Taiwan-based integrated circuit designer, is scheduled to list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Dec. 24, underwriter Capital Securities (群益證券) said yesterday.
The Cayman Islands-registered company will offer a total of 32.2 million shares at an indicative price range of NT$250 (US$8.32) to NT$310, Capital Securities said.
The public subscription period for investors will run through tomorrow, and the listing price will be fixed on Friday, Capital said.
CPC expands in Talin
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) plans to expand the capacity of its Talin (大林) refinery in the next five years at a cost of NT$21 billion (US$702 million).
The company will add four plants by the end of 2015, including a 150,000-barrel-a-day crude distillation unit, CPC vice president Paul Chen (陳綠蔚) said yesterday. That will help cover part of the lost output capacity from the planned closure of the Kaohsiung refinery.
The refiner agreed about 20 years ago to close its Kaohsiung facility by 2015 in exchange for the consent to build an ethylene plant.
Acer signs Wang Chien-ming
Taiwan’s baseball sensation Wang Chien-ming (王建民) will speak for Acer Inc’s (宏碁) products for the seventh consecutive year next year, the PC maker said in a statement yesterday.
Wang has clinched the spokesman contract from Acer, the world’s No. 3 PC brand, since 2005, and will continue to have his images plastered across Acer’s popular notebooks, desktops, monitors and smartphones next year, according to the statement.
Wang, dubbed the “Pride of Taiwan,” has taken a two-year break from the baseball field to recover from shoulder injuries and is set to pitch again next year.
Tire prices increase
Nan Kang Rubber Tire Co (南港輪胎) will increase product prices by about 8 percent from next month because raw material prices continue to rise, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
The Taipei-based company raised prices by between 6 percent and 8 percent on Dec. 1, its third time this year, as the price of natural rubber has soared by 25 percent since the start of the year, while that of synthetic rubber has also jumped more than 14 percent because of rising oil prices.
Chinese executives arrive
Executives from China’s three biggest telecommunications companies, including China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) vice president Liu Aili (劉愛力), will arrive in Taiwan today to discuss cooperation with Taiwanese peers, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported, without citing sources.
China Unicom Corp (中國聯通) and China Telecom Corp (中國電信) will send representatives to discuss issues including investment and roaming fees, the paper said.
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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,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
US President Joe Biden’s administration has proposed a new framework for exports of advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence (AI), an attempt to balance national security concerns about the technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries. However, the framework proposed yesterday also raised concerns of chip industry executives who say the rules would limit access to existing chips used for video games and restrict in 120 countries the chips used for data centers and AI products. Mexico, Portugal, Israel and Switzerland are among the nations that could have limited access to chips needed for AI
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