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.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the