EQUITIES
TAIEX closes down 0.45%
The TAIEX yesterday gave up initial gains to close 0.45 percent lower as investors pocketed profits in bellwether electronics shares, dealers said. Select old economy stocks, in particular in the petrochemical and textile sectors, were bolstered by higher international crude oil prices, but overall market sentiment was hurt by an uptick in the benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield, they said. “The pressure faced by tech stocks came from worries over 10-year US Treasury yields trending higher, as higher yields will make tech stocks look less attractive, but an increase in crude oil prices sent petrochemical, textile and raw material stocks higher,” Hua Nan Securities Co (華南永昌證券) analyst Kevin Su (蘇俊宏) said. The TAIEX closed down 75.73 points, or 0.45 percent, at 16,705.46. Despite the fall, foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$3.28 billion (US$117.08 million) of local shares, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
EQUITIES
Foreigners become buyers
Foreign investors last week bought a net NT$5.96 billion of local shares after selling a net NT$34.07 billion the previous week, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday last week, foreign investors had sold an accumulated NT$572.99 billion of local shares since the beginning of this year, the exchange said. Last week, the top three shares bought by foreign investors were Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) and Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), while the top three sold were United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the exchange said. As of Friday last week, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$22.61 trillion, or 44.09 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
APPAREL
Makalot shares rise 4.07%
Shares of Makalot Industrial Co Ltd (聚陽實業), a manufacturer of ready-to-wear apparel and functional clothing, yesterday rose 4.07 percent as investors welcomed news of a resumption of production at plants in southern Vietnam. The company on Friday last week reported a pretax profit of NT$341 million for last month, up 3.6 percent month-on-month, but down 11.1 percent year-on-year. That brought the company’s pretax profit for the third quarter to NT$1.02 billion, down 1 percent from the previous year, as sales were affected by shipping bottlenecks and a suspension of production in southern Vietnam. Gross margin fell on higher material and pandemic prevention costs. In the first three quarters of the year, pretax profit totaled NT$2.56 billion, up 21.2 percent from the previous year, the company said.
HOSPITALITY
Golden China Hotel to close
The Golden China Hotel (康華大飯店) near Taipei’s Xingtian Temple (行天宮) has decided to exit the market next month due to persistent losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 40-year-old hotel is to close on Nov. 30, its Web site said, due to an unfavorable business outlook as the global health crisis continues. Hotels in Taipei have been hit hard due to their heavy dependence on foreign tourists, as well as a failure to benefit from a boom in domestic tourism. People in possession of its restaurant vouchers can seek refunds, the hotel said. The hotel had sought to bolster sales by cutting room rates to NT$1,440 per night on weekdays and NT$1,540 on weekends, but to no avail.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six