INVESTMENT
Foreigners net buyers
Foreign investors last week bought a net NT$42.43 billion (US$1.54 billion) of local shares after buying a net NT$29.96 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had bought NT$72.39 billion of local shares since the beginning of this year, it said. Last week, the top three shares that foreign investors bought were Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), while the top three sold were Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) and SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控), the exchange said. As of Friday, the market cap of shares held by foreign investors was NT$25.22 trillion, or 44.27 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
ELECTRONICS
Ichia profit rises 6 percent
Flexible printed circuit board and handset keypad maker Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉科技) yesterday reported pretax profit of NT$67.25 million for last quarter, up 6 percent from a year earlier, while revenue rose 4.3 percent year-on-year to NT$1.61 billion. The company said orders remained strong in the October-to-December quarter on the back of robust demand from clients in the automotive electronics and consumer electronics businesses. However, shipments were curtailed by a shortage of raw materials in the supply chain, causing gross margin to fall to 12 percent from 14 percent a year earlier. For the whole of last year, pretax profit rose 41 percent year-on-year to NT$267 million
APPAREL
Makalot income surges 25%
Makalot Industrial Co Ltd (聚陽) yesterday reported that pretax income last year rose 25.1 percent annually to NT$3.4 billion, as it continued to improve its product mix and raise its gross margin, despite the COVID-19 pandemic affecting operations in regional supply chains. Earnings per share were NT$14.33 last year, the highest in the company’s history. The manufacturer of ready-to-wear apparel said that its revenue for last year expanded 16.1 percent to NT$28.93 billion.
E-COMMERCE
EHS earnings hit record
Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure Co (EHS, 東森購物) yesterday reported record earnings per share of NT$17.7 for last year, up from the previous year’s NT$14.11, as revenue from online sales increased 47 percent from NT$7.2 billion to NT$10.6 billion, the company said. Last year, consolidated revenue increased 14.7 percent to NT$28.32 billion, it said. For this year, EHS said it aims to boost online sales to NT$24 billion and lift overall revenue to NT$45.6 billion on the back of contributions from TV shopping and telemarketing, it added.
ELECTRONICS
Qisda secures new loans
Electronics maker Qisda Inc (佳世達) on Thursday said that it had secured two new sustainability-linked loans totaling about NT$1.83 billion from E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) and DBS Bank Ltd’s (星展銀行) Taipei branch. The lenders would track Qisda’s sustainability performance over a two-year period and provide preferential interest rates, a company statement said. The electronics maker has accumulated NT$14 billion in sustainability-linked loans, along with NT$12 billion of such loans obtained from Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) and First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) last year.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
HSBC Holdings PLC is deepening its commitment to Taiwan as the economy emerges as one of the bank’s fastest-growing markets globally, driven by an artificial intelligence (AI) investment boom, expanding cross-border trade, and rising wealth creation. “The advantage that Taiwan has is a growth story linked to the semiconductor and broader AI industries, strong underlying corporate performance, and wealth creation,” said Surendra Rosha, HSBC’s co-chief executive for Asia and the Middle East, in an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times on June 2, during this year’s HSBC Taiwan Conference. That combination has helped HSBC cement its position as the most profitable international
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
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