Taiwan’s commercial property transactions more than doubled to US$2.6 billion last quarter, making it the sixth largest market in the Asia-Pacific region, Real Capital Analytics Inc (RCA) said in a report on Tuesday.
The increase in the nation came while the region saw a 38 percent decline during the same period, the report added.
The sale of a hotel in Taipei for nearly US$1 billion contributed largely to the upturn, the analyst said, adding that real-estate transactions in the industrial sector were strong on the back of robust trading.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan also climbed ahead of Singapore on the leaderboard of most active markets in the region, it said, adding that the first nine months of the year saw sales of US$3.9 billion.
“The escalation of trade tensions between China and the US has resulted in another wave of investment into manufacturing facilities across Asia. Taiwan was no exception, as industrial investment spiked last quarter to US$1.3 billion, a record high for a single quarter,” RCA senior analyst for Asia Pacific Benjamin Chow said.
Taiwan’s strong performance stands in stark contrast to the overall showing in the region where sales of commercial property fell 38 percent between July and September as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed cross-border deals, RCA said.
Income-producing property sales dropped to US$26 billion, down from US$33 billion in the previous quarter and US$42.2 billion a year earlier, it said.
Industrial sector activity matched the level of last year, but all other key property types in the region declined, with hotel and retail sales seeing the sharpest drop, the firm said.
Transactions involving individual properties increased from the second quarter to US$23 billion, boosted by a small amount of high-value deals, while portfolio sales fell to levels last seen during the 2008 global financial crisis, it said.
Sales of development sites, with a majority taking place in China, grew from a year earlier, with deal volume totaling US$162 billion, an 18 percent year-on-year increase, RCA said.
“The COVID-19 pandemic will continue to hamper deal-making for cross-border investors as economic uncertainty in many markets puts many of them on hold,” RCA managing director for Asia Pacific David Green-Morgan said.
Markets with robust domestic demand — such as South Korea, Japan and China — are holding up better in the current environment, Green-Morgan said.
AI SERVER DEMAND: ‘Overall industry demand continues to outpace supply and we are expanding capacity to meet it,’ the company’s chief executive officer said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported that net profit last quarter rose 27 percent from the same quarter last year on the back of demand for cloud services and high-performance computing products. Net profit surged to NT$44.36 billion (US$1.48 billion) from NT$35.04 billion a year earlier. On a quarterly basis, net profit grew 5 percent from NT$42.1 billion. Earnings per share expanded to NT$3.19 from NT$2.53 a year earlier and NT$3.03 in the first quarter. However, a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar since early May has weighed on the company’s performance, Hon Hai chief financial officer David Huang (黃德才)
The Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show, which is to be held from Wednesday to Saturday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, would showcase the latest in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven robotics and automation technologies, the organizer said yesterday. The event would highlight applications in smart manufacturing, as well as information and communications technology, the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association said. More than 1,000 companies are to display innovations in semiconductors, electromechanics, industrial automation and intelligent manufacturing, it said in a news release. Visitors can explore automated guided vehicles, 3D machine vision systems and AI-powered applications at the show, along
FORECAST: The greater computing power needed for emerging AI applications has driven higher demand for advanced semiconductors worldwide, TSMC said The government-supported Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has raised its forecast for this year’s growth in the output value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry to above 22 percent on strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. In its latest IEK Current Quarterly Model report, the institute said the local semiconductor industry would have output of NT$6.5 trillion (US$216.6 billion) this year, up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, an upward revision from a 19.1 percent increase estimate made in May. The strong showing of the local semiconductor industry largely reflected the stronger-than-expected performance of the integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing segment,
COLLABORATION: Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture would make AI data center equipment, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) would operate a US factory owned by Softbank Group Corp, setting up what is in the running to be the first manufacturing site in the Japanese company’s US$500 billion Stargate venture with OpenAI and Oracle Corp. Softbank is acquiring Hon Hai’s electric-vehicle plant in Ohio, but the Taiwanese company would continue to run the complex after turning it into an artificial intelligence (AI) server production plant, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said yesterday. Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture between the two companies would make AI data
RSS