MONEY SUPPLY
Money supply still growing
The nation’s money supply continued to increase year-on-year last month, with the broader monetary gauge M2 growing faster than the narrower M1B for a fifth month running, the central bank said yesterday. M1B, referring to cash and cash equivalents, gained 6.18 percent last month from a year earlier, slower than M2’s 6.81 percent increase, the central bank said. M2 includes savings deposits, time savings deposits, foreign currency deposits, mutual funds and M1B. The central bank attributed the faster increase in M2 to inflows of foreign funds that often move worldwide in the pursuit of higher returns.
TECHNOLOGY
Hiwin expects a pickup
Hiwin Technologies Corp (上銀科技), one of the nation’s major machine tool makers, yesterday said it expects its business performance to improve in the second half of the year on the back of increasing orders for key components for industrial automation. The company also expects gear-cutting tools maker Luren Precision Co (陸聯精密) to become profitable next year, Hiwin chairman Eric Chuo (卓永財) told shareholders. Hiwin bought a 41.93 percent stake in Luren for more than NT$100 million (US$3.22 million) in March. The company’s shareholders approved a proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$3.2 per share and a stock dividend of 3 percent per share based on last year’s net income of NT$2.26 billion, or NT$9.2 per share. That translates into a payout ratio of 34.78 percent and represents a cash yield of 1.52 percent, based on Hiwin’s closing price of NT$210.50 in Taipei trading yesterday.
TELECOMS
Asia Pacific expanding
Asia Pacific Telecom Co’s (亞太電信) 4G network coverage should reach 95 percent of the population by August or September, a company executive said yesterday, amid controversy over the company’s practice of offering 4G roaming services using Taiwan Mobile Telecom Co’s (台灣大哥大) network. The National Communications Commission on Tuesday signaled that it was illegal for the company to provide roaming services in the nation using Taiwan Mobile’s network. Company chairman Lu Fang-ming (呂芳銘) said the company has 295,000 4G subscribers. Asia Pacific is a telecommunications arm of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密). The company lost NT$8.41 billion last year, reversing a net profit of NT$1.84 billion in 2013.
EQUITIES
Large caps lead advance
The TAIEX rose 0.84 percent yesterday, as large-cap stocks staged an across-the-board technical rebound, dealers said. Market sentiment improved to some extent after foreign institutional investors raised their long position contracts in the futures market in the previous session, they said. Shares of smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) closed at a new high, amid optimism over the company’s earnings in the second half of this year, when Apple Inc’s orders are expected to stream in for production of the next generation iPhone, dealers said. The TAIEX closed 79.03 points higher at 9,476.34 on turnover of NT$101.29 billion. Among the large-cap gainers were Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the most heavily weighted stock on the local market, which rose 1.03 percent to close at NT$146.50, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) advanced 1.43 percent to end at NT$99.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
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