FOREIGN RESERVES
Record high set last month
Taiwan retained its position as having the fourth-largest foreign-exchange reserves in the world at the end of last month, as the reserves hit a record high of US$484.52 billion, up US$2.73 billion from a month earlier, the central bank said on Friday. The increase came partly as a result of growth in returns from the bank’s management of its reserves, while the appreciation of non-US dollar currencies against the greenback, such as the euro, boosted asset value when converted into the US dollar, it said. It was the second consecutive month Taiwan has been No. 4, after it replaced Saudi Arabia in that position in April.
CHIPMAKERS
UMC board backs buyback
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) on Friday said its board of directors approved a buyback scheme for 200 million shares on the open market, the first such action in a year. The buyback program would start today and is to run through Aug. 7, it said. The company plans to repurchase shares at between NT$11.55 and NT$23.25 per share. The scheme aims to help shore up UMC’s share price — which rose 1.22 percent to NT$16.5 on Friday in Taipei trading — and reward employees, UMC said.
SMARTPHONES
Competition saps HTC sales
HTC Corp’s (宏達電) consolidated sales for last month increased 33.67 percent from a month earlier to NT$397 million (US$13.3 million), but that was 47.28 percent lower than a year earlier, the company said on Friday. Analysts attributed the decline to escalating competition in the global smartphone market. Cumulative sales in the first five months of the year fell 52.82 percent to NT$2.02 billion, HTC said.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
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
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
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