SEMICONDUCTORS
Book-to-bill ratio still high
The book-to-bill ratio for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers, such as Applied Materials Inc, climbed to 1.09 last month — the highest level since May 2012, industry association SEMI said yesterday. That marked the ninth consecutive month that the ratio has been above one. A book-to-bill ratio greater than one indicates growth for the industry. The three-month average of worldwide bookings in the sector rose 4.3 percent to US$1.47 billion last month from May’s US$1.41 billion, according to SEMI’s data. The three-month average of worldwide billings fell 4.8 percent to US$1.34 billion last month from US$1.41 billion in May.
PHARMACEUTICALS
OBI Pharma trials set
OBI Pharma Inc (台灣浩鼎) announced on Monday that it had met the goal of collecting 342 patients for the phase two and three clinical trials for OBI-822, a new drug for treating metastatic breast cancer. OBI Pharma chairman Michael Chang (張念慈) said the completion of the patient collection phase shows the OBI-822 project is progressing more smoothly than expected. The company is to analyze the data after the last patient completes the treatment stage, he said. The multinational clinical test is being conducted as a randomized control trial in which 45 medical centers across Taiwan, the US, South Korea, India and Hong Kong are participating, the company said.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
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