The depreciation of the New Taiwan dollar has helped boost investment returns at Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), although its total profits plunged 60 percent annually amid tumbling financial markets, Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) told an online investors’ conference yesterday.
The life insurer saw its after-hedge recurring yield rise to 3.77 percent at the end of September, from 2.2 percent a year earlier, and its after-hedge investment return edge up to 3.87 percent from 3.86 percent a year earlier, company data showed.
FOREX GAINS
Photo: Allen Wu, Taipei Times
As the NT dollar has lost value against the US dollar this year, the company in the first nine months generated foreign exchange gains of 0.55 percentage points from its assets denominated in foreign currencies, compared with a loss of 1.75 percentage points a year earlier, the data showed.
Shin Kong Life Insurance invested more in foreign fixed incomes given higher bond yields amid rate hikes, with the ratio of overseas fixed income to its total portfolio rising to 67.3 percent, from 63.7 percent a year earlier, the data showed.
NORTH AMERICAN BONDS
Bonds issued in North America made up 39.7 percent of its total overseas bonds, up from 38.7 percent a year earlier, while European bonds remained flat at about 23 percent and Asian bonds fell to 37.5 percent.
Shin Kong Life Insurance reduced its investment in local stocks, which have tumbled during the first nine months, with the proportion of local stocks in its portfolio sliding from 7.2 percent to 6 percent at the end of September.
Sales of insurance policies denominated in foreign currencies expanded 19.5 percent year-on-year to NT$33.36 billion, accounting for 79.5 percent of all policies, up from a weighing of 78.8 percent a year earlier.
The life insurer said that it would continue to focus on sales of insurance policies denominated in foreign currencies, as such products help it earn more interest spread and reduce its exposure to volatility in the currency exchange rate, it said.
CALL FOR DIVIDENDS
Meanwhile, as Shin Kong Financial’s net profit shrank 52 percent annually to NT$10.37 billion (US$335 million), or earnings per share of NT$0.65, investors at yesterday’s conference asked whether it could distribute cash dividends next year.
The company still has a capital surplus of about NT$18 billion, but it needs to discuss with the regulators whether it could use the funds to distribute dividends, it said, adding that it faces some pressure.
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
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li