The nation’s financial holding companies reported record-high unrealized losses of NT$873.2 billion (US$28.66 billion) during the second quarter, as the value of their investment assets plunged amid market routs sparked by the US Federal Reserve’s cycle of rate hikes, data from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) showed on Monday.
Combined unrealized losses in the first half of this year came in at NT$827.76 billion — NT$661 billion from overseas investments and NT$166 billion from domestic investments, the data showed.
The majority of their losses came from investments in the US, which totaled NT$256.5 billion at the end of June, compared with unrealized losses of NT$38.4 billion at the end of March, the data showed.
Photo: Kelson Wang, Taipei Times
Financial holding companies’ investments in the US increased by NT$503 billion in the second quarter, mainly because local life insurance companies bought more US fixed-income products, the data showed.
China was the second biggest source of losses, with the financial holding firms reporting aggregate losses of NT$53.1 billion, followed by France with losses of NT$31.7 billion, Russia with losses of NT$31.4 billion and Mexico with losses of NT$27.5 billion, the data showed.
The companies also boosted their investments slightly in France, Russia and Mexico, but cut their investments in China by NT$88 billion during the second quarter, the data showed.
Overall, financial holding companies’ overseas exposure totaled NT$23.95 trillion at the end of June, up about 3 percent from the previous quarter, the data showed.
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
RSS