MARKETS
Foreign sell-off tapers
Foreign investors last week sold a net NT$63.44 billion (US$2.25 billion) of local shares after selling NT$166.54 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold NT$258.46 billion of local shares from the beginning of the year, it said. Last week, the top three shares foreign investors sold were Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) and China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控), while the top three were CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), China Steel Corp (中鋼) and Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), the exchange said. The market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$23.23 trillion, or 42.28 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
MEMORYCHIPS
Macronix posts strong gains
Memorychip maker Macronix International Co (旺宏電子) yesterday reported consolidated revenue of NT$3.62 billion for last month, up 20.27 percent from a year ago, on strong market demand. While last month’s figure fell 2.54 percent from January, it was still the highest February level in the company’s history, the company said. Cumulative revenue in the first two months of the year totaled NT$7.34 billion, up 21.97 percent from NT$6.02 billion in the same period last year. Macronix is a leading producer of nonvolatile memory products such as ROM and NOR flash, which are used in a variety of electronic devices. The company said it remains positive about this year’s outlook, as the supply of NOR flash memorychips has become tight and the price should continue to rise.
COMPUTERS
Advantech ratio stays high
Industrial computer manufacturer Advantech Co (研華) yesterday said its book-to-bill ratio remained high at 1.31 percent last month, slightly lower than 1.38 percent in the January-February period, thanks to improving product sales amid a global demand recovery. Consolidated sales were NT$4.67 billion last month, up 29.13 percent from NT$3.62 billion a year ago. Accumulated sales in the first two months totaled NT$10.06 billion, up 23.71 percent year-on-year, the company said in a statement. By geographic region, North America and Europe registered sales growth of 33 percent and 39 percent respectively, while emerging markets registered 44 percent during the two-month period, it said. While the company’s embedded Internet of Things (IoT) group, applied computing group and service-IoT group reported strong sales in the first two months, the cloud-IoT group saw sales slightly decline due to component shortages and a high comparison base last year, it added.
COSMETICS
Chlitina reports flat revenue
Chlitina Holding Ltd (麗豐), which makes and sells cosmetics and skincare products, yesterday said revenue last month was flat from a year ago at NT$266.33 million, as the Lunar New Year holiday cut the number of working days, while sales at its beauty salon franchises in China’s Guangdong Province and Shanghai city were affected by COVID-19 flare-ups. Cumulative revenue in the first two months of this year fell 9.97 percent to NT$623.31 million from a year earlier, the company said. Worldwide, the company operates 4,994 franchisees, including 4,753 in China, the company said. With marketing campaigns and promotional activities beginning this month, the company said it expects growth momentum to emerge in the first half of this year.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
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