STEEL
ITC says imports hurt US
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) on Thursday made a preliminary determination that imports of corrosion-resistant steel from Taiwan, China, India, Italy and South Korea have injured the US steel industry, the US-based Steel Dynamics Inc said in a statement welcoming the commission’s action. US imports of such sheet steel from the five nations has increased 85 percent since 2012 — from 1.5 million tonnes to 2.75 million tonnes last year, the company said. Imports from the five rose more than 30 percent in the first quarter of this year to 800,000 tonnes from 600,000 tonnes last year, it added. Six US steelmakers — including AK Steel Corp, ArcelorMittal USA, Nucor Corp and United States Steel Corp — filed a trade complaint with the ITC and US Department of Commerce on June 3. The department is expected to make preliminary determinations in the countervailing duty cases by Aug. 27 and in the anti-dumping cases by Nov. 10, although both dates may be extended, Steel Dynamics’ statement said.
AGRICULTURE
Mango exports rise 107%
Exports of Taiwanese mangoes more than doubled in the first half of this year, a senior agriculture official said yesterday. A total of 3,607 tonnes of mangoes were exported in the first six months, 107 percent more than the same period of last year, Agriculture and Food Agency Deputy Director Lin Li-fang (林麗芳) said. The value of those exports reached NT$400 million (US$12.77 million), an increase of 135 percent from a year ago, Lin said. The agency forecast that the total volume of mango exports this year could top 10,000 tonnes, compared with more than 6,000 tonnes last year. Most of the 12,000 hectares used for mango cultivation are in Pingtung County, Kaohsiung and Tainan. The Irwin mango, a variety imported from Florida in the 1950s, is the main export product, and the 10 export markets for Taiwanese mangoes include China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, with those countries accounting for more than 90 percent of the exports, the agency said.
FINANCE
Yuanta to redeem shares
Yuanta Securities Corp (元大證券) is to book NT$500 million in recovered investments by redeeming its holdings of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) A-type preferred shares, according a company filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The announcement came after several financial firms on Wednesday rejected a proposal to convert their preferred THSRC shares into common shares. The railway company is using the share conversion scheme to help revitalize its ailing finances, but opponents say it would halve the value of their THSRC shares.
FOOTWEAR
Feng Tay shares up 3.41%
Shares in shoemaker Feng Tay Enterprise Co (豐泰鞋業) yesterday rose 3.41 percent after the company’s latest quarterly results beat market expectations. Net income expanded 58 percent year-on-year to NT$976 million in the second quarter, boosting total earnings for the first half of the year 44.11 percent to NT$1.81 billion from the same period last year. Earnings per share were NT$3.04 in the first half, compared with NT$2.17 a year earlier, the company said in a filing to the stock exchange. Feng Tay said rising orders from Nike Inc and its capacity expansion this year would help drive revenue and earnings growth this year. Shares of Feng Tay closed at NT$167 yesterday in Taipei trading, rising 4.53 percent this week.
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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