EQUITIES
Caution drives TAIEX lower
The TAIEX closed lower yesterday as investors locked in their earlier gains because of caution over the outlook for US markets after authorities warned of security threats at US president-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday next week. However, shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to rise due to optimism that the contract chipmaker would deliver positive leads in an investor conference tomorrow, helping the broader market limit losses, dealers said. In addition, reports that a mass evacuation of patients from a northern Taiwan hospital late on Monday — implying possible COVID-19 infections within the hospital — sparked buying among virus prevention stocks, they said. The TAIEX ended down 56.6 points, or 0.36 percent, at 15,500.70, on turnover of NT$369.601 billion (US$12.98 billion). Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$6.43 billion of shares on the main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Intel reassures on Ice Lake
Intel Corp on Monday said that a server chip built with its best production technique would be available in large volumes in the first quarter, an attempt to convince customers that its manufacturing operations are recovering from long delays. The third generation of Xeon Scalable processors, codenamed Ice Lake, is undergoing a “volume ramp” on Intel’s 10-nanometer (nm) production, it said. Xeon chips are the heart of giant server farms run by cloud providers such as Amazon.com Inc and Google. However, these customers have begun designing their own data center chips and often have TSMC, which is ahead of the US firm in process technology, make the components. Separately, Intel plans to tap TSMC to make a second-generation discrete graphics chip for personal computers that it hopes will help it combat the rise of Nvidia Corp, two sources familiar with the matter said. The chip, known as “DG2,” is to be made using a new process technology that TSMC has not yet formally named, but is an enhanced version of its 7nm process, the two people said.
ELECTRONICS
Delta sales hit all-time high
Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) on Monday announced that consolidated revenue for last month totaled NT$26.91 billion, up 5.6 percent month-on-month and 20.1 percent year-on-year. The nation’s leading power management solutions provider, Delta classifies its products under three divisions: power electronics, automation and infrastructure, which accounted for 54 percent, 14 percent and 32 percent of its total revenue last month. Last month’s results led its fourth-quarter revenue to rise 1.12 percent quarterly and 15.2 percent annually to NT$78.55 billion. For the full year, revenue reached a record-high NT$282.61 billion, up 5.4 percent from NT$268.13 billion in 2019.
TELECOMS
APG fault under repair: CHT
Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信), the nation’s largest telecom service provider, yesterday said it expected a damaged Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) submarine communications cable to resume normal services by Wednesday next week. The company said in a statement that it has allocated other submarine communications cables to support customers’ usage, adding that most customers were not significantly affected by the incident. Chunghwa’s remarks came after local media reports said subscribers of Netflix Inc and Line Inc had encountered slow Internet connections due to the APG fault.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts