EQUITIES
Foreigners sell net NT$34bn
Foreign investors last week sold a net NT$34.07 billion (US$1.21 billion) of local shares after selling a net NT$86.22 billion the previous week, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold an accumulated net NT$578.95 billion of local shares since the beginning of this year, the exchange said. Last week, the top three shares sold by foreign investors were United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), China Steel Corp (中鋼) and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), while the top three bought were CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) and Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), the exchange said. As of Friday, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$22.17 trillion, or 43.61 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Wowprime to hike prices
Restaurant chain operator Wowprime Corp (王品集團) yesterday said it would raise the prices of some of its brands by about 5 percent from Oct. 25 to reflect increases in raw materials and wages. Wowprime operates 15 restaurant brands in Taiwan and China, including Wang Steak (王品台塑牛排), Tasty (西堤) and 12 Sabu (石二鍋). The company said that it has since last year faced price increases for beef, pork, fish and chicken items, as well as cooking oil and sugar, citing a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report that global food prices have risen 40 percent in the past 15 months and that prices last month were the highest in 10 years. A rise in the minimum wage in Taiwan would also increase the firm’s financial burden, Wowprime said. From 2018 to this year, Taiwan’s minimum monthly wage has risen 9.1 percent, while the hourly wage has risen 14.3 percent, it added.
STEELMAKERS
CSC total revenue edges up
China Steel Co (CSC, 中鋼), Taiwan’s largest steel mill, yesterday said that consolidated revenue last month totaled NT$41.98 billion, up 0.64 percent from a month earlier and 60.67 percent from a year earlier. Rising steel prices, and recovered output at its units in Malaysia and Vietnam, helped its third-quarter revenue rise 8.77 percent quarterly and 68.83 percent annually to NT$125.58 billion, the firm said. Kaohsiung-based CSC said it expects infrastructure plans in the US and Europe, and China’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality to continue to bolster prices in this quarter. In the first nine months of the year, cumulative revenue increased 49.15 percent year-on-year to NT$338.85 billion — the highest for the nine-month period in the company’s history.
INSURANCE
FSC fines Chubb NT$6m
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Thursday fined Chubb Corp Taiwan (美商安達產險) NT$6 million for breaches of the Insurance Act (保險法), as the insurer sold products on the Web sites of two local airlines without regulatory approval. Since 2018, the company has partnered with Mandarin Airlines Ltd (華信航空) and Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航), offering its tourism insurance products on their Web sites, the commission said. “Insurance policies involve consumers’ confidential information, so selling them on the airlines’ Web sites could be risky as far as cybersecurity is concerned,” Insurance Bureau Deputy Director Lin Chih-hsien (林志憲) told a videoconference. The commission has demanded that Chubb Taiwan suspends the sale of its tourism insurance policies for six months, Lin said.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
RSS