HOUSING
Loans total hits NT$6 trillion
Taiwan’s home loans totaled NT$6.0277 trillion (US$182.6 billion) at the end of last month, up 3.2 percent year-on-year and 0.09 percent month-on-month, the central bank said on Friday. Renewed buying activity on the part of home buyers by the end of the year and ahead of a new housing policy next year accounted for the increase, the bank said. Self-occupancy upheld the housing market, as first-time buyers increased their mortgage loans by NT$4.4 billion at eight major state-run banks to NT$439.8 billion last month from October, it said. However, construction financing increased 1.97 percent from a year earlier to NT$1.6463 trillion, the lowest annual increase in 23 months, reflecting the sector’s conservative attitude toward the market going forward.
SECURITIES
Chinese IPO rules to change
Chinese lawmakers cleared the way for securities laws to be changed as early as March for the nation to introduce a new registration system for initial public offerings. The Standing Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress passed a resolution to allow the Chinese State Council to make the adjustments, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Under a registration system, questions of IPO supply and timing would be left to companies and the market, rather than regulators.
INDUSTRY
Company profits fall
Profits earned by Chinese industrial companies last month fell 1.4 percent from a year earlier, marking a sixth consecutive month of decline, Chinese National Bureau of Statistics data showed yesterday. Industrial profits fell 1.9 percent in the first 11 months compared with the same period a year earlier, the bureau said.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
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