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.
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,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
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