EQUITIES
US rally spurs investors
Shares in Taiwan yesterday staged a rebound as investors were encouraged by an overnight rally in semiconductor stocks on US markets and focused on the bellwether electronics sector, dealers said. Buying also extended to old economy stocks, especially in the shipping and commodities sectors, as China began easing COVID-19 lockdowns in major cities, leading to hopes of improved demand, they said. The TAIEX closed up 94.53 points, or 0.56 percent, to 16,993.40. Turnover totaled NT$226.694 billion (US$7.76 billion), with foreign institutional investors buying a net NT$2.13 billion of shares after a net sell of NT$19.41 billion on Monday. The electronics sector rose 0.55 percent and the semiconductor sub-index closed 0.61 percent higher, while paper stocks rose 1.12 percent and the transportation sector rose 2.65 percent.
SEMICONDUCTORS
TSMC plans staff subsidy
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is planning to provide subsidies to employees who purchase its shares, the company said yesterday. To attract and retain staff, TSMC is set to launch the share purchase subsidy scheme for its 50,000 employees later this year, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday. This is the first time that TSMC has decided to subsidize employees buying its shares, the report said. Under the scheme expected to take effect in July, TSMC employees can have an amount deducted from their monthly salary to buy the company’s shares, while the company would offer subsidies of up to 15 percent to employees for those purchases, the report said. TSMC said that discussions about the subsidy program were under way and that details such as the subsidy rate would be determined during the company’s board meeting next month.
ELECTRONICS
Wiwynn plans NT$25 divined
Cloud computing equipment supplier Wiwynn Corp’s (緯穎科技) board of directors has proposed distributing a cash dividend of NT$25 per share, representing a payout ratio of 50.5 percent based on its earnings per share of NT$49.46 for last year, the company said on Monday. Wiwynn, a subsidiary of contract electronics maker Wistron Corp (緯創), reported record net profit of NT$8.65 billion for last year, up 0.5 percent from 2020, as consolidated revenue increased 3 percent to NT$192.63 billion, the highest in the company’s history. Wiwynn supplies cloud-based servers and solutions to global data center operators such as Microsoft Corp, Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc. Due to steady growth in shipments to clients, revenue in the first quarter increased 29.07 percent year-on-year to NT$50.71 billion, the highest on record for the January-to-March period, the company said.
ELECTRONICS
Hon Hai ‘well’ in China
The world’s biggest iPhone assembly campus, on the outskirts of the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, is operating normally despite lockdowns and mass COVID-19 testing that began in the area last week, the Henan Daily reported. Operated by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), the sprawling assembly site’s importance to Apple Inc’s smartphone supply chain has earned the locality the nickname of iPhone City. “Production at the Foxconn campus is proceeding well with some 200,000 workers,” the newspaper said, citing Foxconn managers within the compound. “The supply lines haven’t been affected by COVID.”
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
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
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
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