Despite the National Development Council’s (NDC) business climate monitor flashing “yellow-blue” for the first time in 26 months, indicating sluggish business, local publicly traded companies still reported revenue growth and showed solid fundamentals, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chairman Thomas Huang (黃天牧) said yesterday.
Huang’s comment came as investors mulled over whether the FSC would implement the short-selling ban on all local stocks after the TAIEX benchmark index continued its downtrend, falling 1.07 percent to 12,788.42 points.
The commission accounts for the business climate monitor when adjusting its policy, but local companies have operated securely, with combined revenues growing about 10 percent year-on-year for the first three quarters, Huang said.
Photo: CNA
The average yield of local stocks stands at 5.34 percent and the price-earnings ratio tallied 9.4, suggesting that the fundamentals of local stocks are strong, he added.
FSC data show that the monetary valuation of all local and foreign shares held by local financial sectors plunged to NT$2.6 trillion (US$80.88 billion) at the end of last month, down 16 percent from NT$3.1 trillion a month earlier,.
Local banks were the biggest share sellers, off-loading NT$136.5 billion of local shares last month, while local brokerages sold about NT$3.7 billion of local shares, the commission’s data showed.
Only local life insurance companies bought more local shares last month. The combined valuation of local shares held by local life insurers dropped to NT$1.59 trillion at the end of last month, the lowest in 30 months, the commission’s data showed.
Turnover in local stocks totaled NT$172.7 billion yesterday, while foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$11.85 billion of local shares, with weighted stocks such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), MediaTek Inc (聯發科) and Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) suffering the brunt, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$10.4 billion of local shares this week, much less than NT$50.24 billion a week earlier, the data showed.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day