EQUITIES
TAIEX rallies despite war
The TAIEX yesterday made a significant technical comeback after heavy losses last week triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bargain hunters could be found across the board, with the electronics sector — which had been hard hit — in focus. Buying also rotated to raw material stocks on the back of rising product prices, as well as shipping stocks due to hopes of high cash dividends, dealers said. However, the TAIEX failed to reach 18,000 during the session, as high technical hurdles remained above that level, the dealers added. The TAIEX closed up 246.07 points, or 1.39 percent, at 17,898.25. Turnover totaled NT$357.919 billion (US$12.77 billion), with foreign institutional investors buying a net NT$6.33 billion of shares, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
EQUITIES
Foreign buyers offload tech
Foreign investors last week sold a net NT$166.54 billion of local shares after selling NT$6.31 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold NT$195.02 billion of local shares from the beginning of the year, it said. Last week, the top three shares foreign investors sold were China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), while the top three bought were Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), Tatung Co (大同) and Macronix International Co (旺宏), the exchange said. The market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$23.38 trillion, or 42.74 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Inergy rises 3% on debut
Shares in Inergy Technology Inc (廣閎科技), a fabless IC design firm that provides green energy solutions, yesterday rose 3.02 percent on the firm’s Taipei Exchange trading debut, following a well-received share sale last month. The shares opened at NT$122.5 and rose as high as NT$129.5 in the morning session before paring gains to close the day at NT$119.5, which was 3.02 percent higher than the initial offering price of NT$116 per share. Inergy was established in 2007 and is based in Hsinchu County’s Jhubei City (竹北). It offers integrated power components that are optimized for system applications, as well as integrated power modules for motor drives and hall sensors. It reported net profit of NT$74.093 million in the first three quarters of last year, down from NT$17.613 million a year earlier, or earnings per share of NT$1.82. Revenue last year rose 40.9 percent to NT$1.212 billion from NT$860.44 million in 2020.
INVESTMENTS
Scams rose 72% in 2021
The number of investment scams last year rose 72 percent annually to 4,904 cases, with total financial losses doubling to NT$2.08 billion, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said on Thursday last week, citing data compiled by the National Policy Agency (NPA). The figure accounted for 19.7 percent of total scams that the Criminal Investigation Bureau addressed last year, second only to online shopping scams at 22.8 percent, NPA data showed. The bureau has categorized three main types of investment scams: online gambling, cryptocurrency investments and overseas investments, Banking Bureau Chief Secretary Phil Tong (童政彰) said. Firms attending a financial crime seminar on Wednesday in Taipei had proposed that the NPA and the commission should have a platform to exchange information and crack down on such scams.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
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