EQUITIES
US losses rattle investors
Taiwanese shares yesterday took a beating after the Mid-Autumn Festival long weekend, as investors were unnerved by heavy losses on the US markets in the past few sessions. The TAIEX closed down 350.97 points, or 2.03 percent, at 16,925.82. Turnover totaled NT$293.029 billion (US$10.55 billion), with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$35.49 billion of shares on the main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. “Today’s turnover remained thin, as many investors appeared reluctant to hunt bargains,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
EQUITIES
Foreigners buy NT$4.5bn
Foreign investors last week bought a net NT$4.5 billion of local shares after buying a net NT$27.63 billion the previous week, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. The top three shares bought by foreign investors last week were CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥) and Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), while the top three sold were United Microelectronics Co (聯電), Innolux Corp (群創光電) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the exchange said. As of Friday last week, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$23.22 trillion, or 44.04 percent of total market capitalization, it added.
EQUITIES
FSC to review new boards
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) last week said that it would review regulations on two new trading boards to boost companies’ interest in them. In July, the government launched the Taiwan Innovative Board (TIB) on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Pioneer Stock Board (PSB) on the Taipei Exchange, with only one firm listing on the PSB and none on the TIB. The commission had expected 20 firms to list on the TIB and PSB within a year of their launches. The remarks came after Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) announced that it would launch an initial public offering on the NASDAQ, instead of pursuing a local listing.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Billings fall in N America
North America-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers last month posted a decline of 5.4 percent in billings to US$3.65 billion from US$3.86 billion in July, marking the first monthly contraction in eight months, a SEMI report showed yesterday. That represented a 37.6 percent expansion from US$2.65 billion in August last year, SEMI said. “After an extraordinary eight-month run of record-breaking results, billings of North America-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers expectedly softened in August compared to July,” SEMI president and chief executive officer Ajit Manocha said. “Nonetheless, billings continue to reflect strong demand for semiconductor equipment and solid year-over-year growth.”
STEELMAKERS
CSC profit declines 4%
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼) yesterday posted pretax profit of NT$8.71 billion for last month, 4 percent less than July’s pretax profit of NT$9.08 billion. That brought its cumulative pretax profit for the first eight months of the year to NT$52.997 billion, a surge of 1,447 percent from the same period last year. As major steel mills around the world begin annual maintenance while end-market demand remains stable, CSC’s operations are expected to maintain growth momemtum in the fourth quarter, analysts said.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained