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.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS