FOOD & BEVERAGE
AGV, Nestle sign deal
Food manufacturer AGV Products Corp (愛之味) yesterday inked a contract with Nestle SA to formally become one of the Swiss company’s most important partners in Asia. AGV is likely to be tasked with making Nestle’s Nestea tea brand, a boon to the company’s sales next year, analysts said. The company reported a net income of NT$212 million (US$6.41 million) for the third quarter to move its bottom line for this year into the black. Third-quarter earnings per share were NT$0.44.
INVESTMENT
Fubon rejects rumors
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) yesterday rejected rumors of a botched investment by Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽), the group’s most profitable unit, in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company said that its financial condition remains sound and that it does not comment on individual investment bids. Since acquiring 12 million common shares in Netherlands-based insurer Delta Lloyd for NT$7.32 billion in March, Fubon Life has incurred unrealized losses estimated at around NT$5 billion as a spike in global market volatility rocked the share price of the Dutch company, according to a report published in the Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday.
TRAVEL
A-mei package announced
China Airlines (中華航空) yesterday announced a promotional package for pop star A-mei’s (張惠妹) upcoming concert stop in Thailand next year. Packages start at NT$15,250 per person for a two-day, one-evening itinerary, and includes airfares to and from Bangkok, car and public transport, lodging and tickets for A-mei’s concerts in the Thai capital’s Royal Paragon Hall on April 16. The concert coincides with the Songkran festival involving three days of celebrations and water splashing to mark the beginning of the Thai New Year.
FINANCE
Firms to get helping hand
Taiwan is launching a strategic partnership program with Taiwanese businesses operating in member states of ASEAN, aimed at helping Taiwan-based enterprises increase their markets in the region, a senior official at the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Tuesday. Lien Yu-ping (連玉蘋), director-general of the ministry’s Department of Investment Services, said in a Taipei forum on globalization that due to geographic factors, Taiwan and the ASEAN member nations have developed close relations in the fields of trade, investment, labor and agriculture. With the implementation of the program, the government is to help Taiwanese enterprises broaden their markets in Southeast Asia through the networks of Taiwanese business associations operating in the region, Lien said.
COMPONENTS
SPIL forms ‘special panel’
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密), the world’s third-largest chip tester and assembler, yesterday said that it has formed a special panel to assess a second unsolicited tender offer from rival Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體). ASE proposes to buy an additional 24.7 percent share of SPIL for NT$42.35 billion. The company said that it received ASE’s tender offer yesterday and the newly formed special panel is expected to review the offer in the next 10 days. The special panel is to release its evaluation on Jan. 9 for a board of directors’ meeting on the same day.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday 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
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
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
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