INVESTMENT
Bond issuance beats target
International bonds issued in Taiwan have exceeded the government’s target of NT$600 billion (US$18.94 billion) for this year, the Financial Supervisory Commission said on Thursday. As of the end of last month, the total bond issuance of NT$1.29 trillion was 214.96 percent of the target amount, the commission said. Foreign-debt issuers this year launched nine yuan-denominated Formosa bonds totaling 7.73 billion yuan (US$1.15 billion), it said. The international bonds issued in Taiwan have reaped investment returns of NT$58.4 billion over the past two years, bringing in underwriting and consulting fees of about NT$3.5 billion as well as NT$10.5 billion in tax revenues, it added.
RETAIL
Convenience store sales rise
The nation’s two major convenience store operators both reported increased sales for last month, supported by robust demand for fresh food and iced products. President Chain Store Corp’s (統一超商) sales increased 2.99 percent annually to NT$18.1 billion last month, with aggregate sales in the first nine months rising 5.48 percent annually to NT$161.5 billion. Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店) reported revenue last month increased 2.96 percent year-on-year to NT5.03 billion. FamilyMart’s sales in the first nine months of this year increased 4.3 percent year-on-year to NT$45.3 billion.
TECHNOLOGY
HTC boosts start-up funds
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said it will invest an additional US$100 million in its Vive X accelerator program, which aims to fund virtual reality (VR) start-ups around the world. The new investment represents the second stage of the Vive X program, which was launched in August in Taipei, San Francisco, Beijing and Shenzhen with HTC’s first US$100 million investment. The company backed more than 30 VR start-ups in the first phase of the program.
REAL ESTATE
Occupancy rates revealed
There were 862,600 unoccupied residential properties in Taiwan last year, accounting for 10.35 percent of the total, the Ministry of the Interior said on Thursday. Of the empty properties, 118,713 were in New Taipei City and 63,890 were in Taipei, meaning that more than 20 percent of properties in the region were unoccupied, according to statistics compiled by the ministry’s real-estate information platform. The highest non-occupancy rate — 15.98 percent — was in Yilan, where 28,000 properties were unoccupied. Among the six special municipalities, Taoyuan had the highest non-occupancy rate at 11.49 percent, followed by Kaohsiung (10.86 percent), Tainan (10.15 percent), Taichung (10.02 percent), New Taipei City (7.72 percent) and Taipei (7.22 percent).
TRADE
US seeks arbitration
The US on Thursday said it was calling for a WTO arbitration panel to resolve an escalating trade dispute on Chinese export barriers for raw materials, including lead, tin, graphite, antimony, chromium and copper. “We will aggressively pursue this challenge on behalf of US steelworkers, auto workers, aerospace workers and the many Americans whose businesses, jobs and livelihoods depend on the strength of these and other industries,” US Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement. Froman’s office in July took the initial step of calling for consultations with China to resolve the matter. Thursday’s announcement seeking arbitration indicated such consultations had not been successful.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
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