EQUITIES
Gogoro dives on US debut
Electric scooter maker Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) on Tuesday made its debut on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, but its shares plunged more than 12 percent as tech stocks on the US market suffered heavy losses amid rising fears that the US Federal Reserve would become more aggressive in tightening its monetary policy. Gogoro, which is the first Taiwanese unicorn start-up to list its shares on the NASDAQ, closed down 12.3 percent at US$14.02, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ index fell 2.26 percent. Gogoro completed a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Poema Global Holdings Corp on Monday. It has been 16 years since a Taiwanese company has listed in the US, although Gogoro’s listing is a so-called backdoor listing, as Poema Global shares had previously been traded on the NASDAQ.
EQUITIES
Foreigners sell NT$7.2bn
Foreign investors last week sold a net NT$7.2 billion (US$250.26 million) of local shares after buying a net NT$316.17 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold NT$469.79 billion of local shares from the beginning of the year, it said. Last week, the top three shares foreign investors sold were Innolux Corp (群創), United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), while the top three shares they bought were China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控), CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) and SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控), the exchange said. As of Friday, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$22.7 trillion, or 41.54 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
EQUITIES
Financial shares shine
Financial shares have grown into an investment bright spot on the local bourse, outperforming tech and non-tech shares due to interest rate hikes at home and abroad, analysts said last week. Financial shares gained 6 percent last month, bucking declines of 1 to 2 percent in tech and non-tech shares, Cathay Securities Investment Trust Co (國泰投信) said. Investors expect financial stocks to benefit from widening interest spread after Taiwan and the US last month raised interest rates by 25 basis points and could increase them further to combat inflation, Cathay Securities said. The US Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates by 2 percentage points this year, which would be favorable for the TAIEX, it said, adding that it would be worthwhile increasing stakes in shares in the TAIEX, as the main board has fallen to a relative cheap point with a price-to-earnings ratio of 12.4, compared with 13 in October last year.
HOTELIERS
Forte Hotel Hsinchu closing
Forte Hotel Hsinchu (新竹福泰商務飯店) has announced that it plans to stop offering guestrooms on May 10 and exit the market at the end of the month, when its lease is due to expire. The hotel, which has 138 guestrooms, said that the closure has nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, as its occupancy rates have been 60 to 70 percent on average since the level 3 COVID-19 alert ended last year, thanks to a boom in domestic tourism. It said that it would not rule out a return to the market if the opportunity arises. Apart from the Hsinchu property, the group operates nine hotels in Taipei, Yilan, Taichung, Changhua and Chiayi. Four of them currently serve as quarantine facilities.
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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