LCD PANELS
TV panel shipments to slip
Global LCD TV panel shipments are expected to shrink 0.7 percent in the current quarter, bucking the uptrend in the high season, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) predicted yesterday. The reduction would be very rare, and the researcher blamed excess inventory behind the contraction as demand in Europe and emerging markets fell short of expectation on weak currencies against the US dollar. At the end of last quarter, supply chain inventory rose to two to three weeks high than normal level, TrendForce said. For the full year of this year, global LCD TV panel shipments are expected to reach 252 million units, it said.
FINANCE
First Financial raising capital
First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) yesterday announced plans to raise capital to reinvest in its banking subsidiary and enhance the capital structure of First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), according to the company’s Taiwan Stock Exchange filing. The company plans to issue 1.6 billion new common shares at NT$10 par value per share next month. First Financial said it would also use the proceeds to enhance the company’s capital adequacy and strengthen its working capital, which will allow it to capitalize on business expansion opportunities when ideal investment targets become available. It expects to complete the fundraising in the middle of September.
TEXTILES
Makalot income rises 29%
Makalot Industrial Co (聚陽), a textile supplier for global apparel retailers such as Zara, yesterday said pretax income for the first six months of the year rose 29.06 percent year-on-year to NT$1.33 billion, or NT$6.95 per share, according to the company’s Taiwan Stock Exchange filing. Last month alone, the company’s pretax income reached NT$191.44 million, after it reported record-high revenue of NT$1.84 billion (US$59.1 million) in the month, up 27.37 percent month-on-month and 23.54 percent year-on-year. Over the first half, total revenue grew 12.43 percent year-on-year to NT$10.76 billion. Although the company is poised to enter its high season in the second half, Makalot shares yesterday fell 1.14 percent to NT$264.
AVIATION
Air Lease to lease FAT 737
US-based Air Lease Corp yesterday announced a long-term lease agreement with Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) for one new Boeing 737-800, adding the Taiwanese carrier as its new customer in Asia. “We look forward to a long and supportive relationship as they begin to renew and expand their fleet,” Air Lease chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy said in a press release. The aircraft is from ALC’s order book with Boeing Co, which will deliver in the second quarter of next year, the US firm said.
STOCK MARKET
Securities profits drop 72%
The stock market correction last month caused securities companies operating in Taiwan to see their monthly profits drop by 72.11 percent from May to NT$500.66 million, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) said yesterday. Last month, the TAIEX fell 378.05 points, or 3.9 percent, to closed at 9,323.02 on June 30, with average daily turnover on the local bourse contracting by 1.95 percent to NT$95.5 billion, the TWSE said. In the first six months, securities companies as a whole reported collective profits of NT$14.68 billion, down 13 percent from the same period of last year, the TWSE said. The average daily turnover on the local bourse contracted by 5 percent to NT$88.3 billion in the period, it said.
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
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
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
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