Twitter Inc held center stage on Wall Street in a week of rocky trade that ultimately held up against sell-offs of bubbly tech shares to set a new Dow Jones Industrial Average record.
Twitter’s long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) dazzled the market as the company jacked up its first offer price by one-third to answer demand, only to see the shares still rocket almost 73 percent on the opening day.
The markets overall went in the opposite direction on Thursday, yet rebounded 24 hours later buoyed by strong economic data, despite the suggestion that it could spell earlier policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve.
The Dow ended the week at a new high of 15,761.78, up 0.9 percent for the period, while the S&P 500 ended a bare point below its record at 1,770.61, for a gain of 0.5 percent. By contrast, the NASDAQ struggled with the sell-off of tech stocks Tesla Motors Inc and Facebook Inc — with some investors rotating into Twitter — to lose 0.1 percent overall at 3,919.23.
The largest of a growing flood of IPOs taking advantage of easy investor cash, Twitter originally proposed an issue price of US$17 to US$20. Yet as demand for the 70 million shares soared, it punched the price up to between US$23 and US$25, and then finally US$26, collecting US$1.8 billion.
When they hit the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, the shares jumped as high as US$50 before finishing at US$44.90, valuing the still profit-less company higher than US$24 billion. On Friday, the shares slipped, but were still at a respectable US$41.65.
The week was also marked by a mixed bag of quarterly earnings results: gaining on positive results were JC Penney Co Inc, Transocean Ltd, Disney Co, Time Warner Inc, and CVS Caremark Corp; while disappointments came from chipmaker Qualcomm Inc, Whole Foods Market Inc, Tesla, Chesapeake Energy and Hertz Corp.
The biggest contrast to Twitter was struggling BlackBerry Ltd, which plunged on Monday on the news that it would not be sold. With its fate still in question, it lost 15.6 percent for the week.
The markets took in stride two strong economic reports that months earlier would have sent shivers through traders as harbingers of tightening by the Fed.
On Thursday, the government said the US economy expanded at a 2.8 percent pace in the third quarter — much faster than expected — and the jobs report that followed a day later showed that 204,000 net new posts were created last month. The figure was double what was expected, despite the partial government shutdown earlier last month.
Real estate agent and property developer JSL Construction & Development Co (愛山林) led the average compensation rankings among companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) finished 14th. JSL Construction paid its employees total average compensation of NT$4.78 million (US$159,701), down 13.5 percent from a year earlier, but still ahead of the most profitable listed tech giants, including TSMC, TWSE data showed. Last year, the average compensation (which includes salary, overtime, bonuses and allowances) paid by TSMC rose 21.6 percent to reach about NT$3.33 million, lifting its ranking by 10 notches
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic fuel stations are this week to rise NT$0.2 and NT$0.3 per liter respectively, after international crude oil prices increased last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices last week snapped a two-week losing streak as the geopolitical situation between Russia and Ukraine turned increasingly tense, CPC said in a statement. News that some oil production facilities in Alberta, Canada, were shut down due to wildfires and that US-Iran nuclear talks made no progress also helped push oil prices to a significant weekly gain, Formosa said
MINERAL DIPLOMACY: The Chinese commerce ministry said it approved applications for the export of rare earths in a move that could help ease US-China trade tensions Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) is today to meet a US delegation for talks in the UK, Beijing announced on Saturday amid a fragile truce in the trade dispute between the two powers. He is to visit the UK from yesterday to Friday at the invitation of the British government, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. He and US representatives are to cochair the first meeting of the US-China economic and trade consultation mechanism, it said. US President Donald Trump on Friday announced that a new round of trade talks with China would start in London beginning today,
RSS