EQUITIES
Tech stocks push up TAIEX
Taiwanese shares gained yesterday as the bellwether electronics sector continued its rise in the wake of a rally among tech stocks on US markets. However, some old economy stocks, in particular in the steel sector, remained in the doldrums, dampening the upturn on the broader market, dealers said. In addition, turnover kept falling amid rising concerns over escalating infections with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in many countries and investors fearing interruptions to the recovery of the global economy, they said. Moreover, many local companies are soon to report their sales for last month, prompting investors to wait for real numbers, they added. The TAIEX closed up 70.13 points, or 0.4 percent, at 17,623.89. Turnover totaled NT$374.025 billion (US$13.44 billion), compared with Tuesday’s NT$390.3 billion, with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$10.62 billion of shares on the main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
DISPLAYS
Innolux shares surge
Shares of LCD panel maker Innolux Corp (群創) surged yesterday after the company reported improved profitability in the second quarter. Innolux closed up 10 percent, the largest gain on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The company on Tuesday reported net profit of NT$21.4 billion in the second quarter, its highest quarterly profit and a sequential increase of 85.1 percent. That translated to earnings per share of NT$2.05. Innolux’s consolidated sales rose 11.21 percent from the first quarter to NT$93.2 billion, while operating income rose 59.8 percent to NT$23.8 billion. Innolux said that the sales and profit numbers largely reflected increasing global demand due to many economies reopening after lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Nuvoton predicts imbalance
Semiconductor firms would continue to struggle to meet customer demand, especially from the automotive sector, in the second half of this year, Nuvoton Technology Corp (新唐科技) said yesterday. The statement came after the Hsinchu-based supplier of microcontrollers reported record revenue of NT$10.61 billion in the second quarter, up 5.38 percent from the first quarter on the back of rising product prices. Net income for the second quarter also surged 247 percent sequentially to a record of NT$939 million, thanks to improved gross margin and investment gains. Earnings per share were NT$2.37 in the second quarter and NT$3.07 in the first half of this year.
ENERGY
EU firm opens local factory
A new wind turbine assembly facility operated by Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA has started production in Taichung, making it the firm’s first plant outside Europe. Siemens Gamesa in a statement on Tuesday said that the new facility would primarily provide equipment for the 900-megawatt Greater Changhua 1 and 2a offshore wind farms, which are under development by the Danish firm Orsted A/S. Siemens Gamesa’s 30,000m2 assembly plant “reinforces our local footprint in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region,” the German-Spanish joint venture said. The plant would assemble the SG 8.0-167 DD turbines for the Changhua sites, it said. The Greater Changhua 1 and 2a wind farms are 35km to 50km off the coast of Changhua County.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
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