EQUITIES
TAIEX rises slightly
The TAIEX yesterday closed little changed after moving in a narrow range throughout the session. Despite the bellwether electronics sector staying weak, with large-cap semiconductor stocks particularly sluggish, old economy stocks in the biotech and tourism industries received a boost from rotational buying, lending some support to the broader market. The TAIEX closed up 8.09 points, or 0.05 percent, at 15,400.91. Turnover on the main board totaled NT$187.587 billion (US$6.24 billion), with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$3.28 billion of shares, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. The electronics sector lost 0.15 percent, with the semiconductor subindex falling 0.37 percent. The biotech industry rose 1.25 percent, the tourism sector was up 1.11 percent and the financial sector moved 0.17 percent higher.
IC DESIGN
Global Unichip soars 5.39%
Shares of Global Unichip Corp (GUC, 創意電子), an application-specific IC design subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), yesterday rose 5.39 percent to close at NT$841 on expectations that the company would be included in the MSCI Global Standard Indexes set to be released later this week. The company’s share price outperformed its parent company, as TSMC fell 0.57 percent to close at NT$523 yesterday. GUC, whose business also includes nonrecurring engineering services, on Monday reported its consolidated revenue last month fell 33.06 percent month-on-month, but rose 26.81 percent year-on-year to NT$2.09 billion. The company posted record-high revenue, operating profit and net profit for last year on strong demand, and has said that revenue this year would grow by double-digit percentage points from last year and earnings per share could exceed the previous year’s NT$27.69.
BIOMEDICINE
Energenesis approved
The Taiwan Stock Exchange’s securities listing review committee has approved the initial listing application of Energenesis Biomedical Co (華安醫學), the exchange said in a statement yesterday. Under chairman Chiu Jen-yi (邱壬乙), Energenesis has paid-in capital of NT$668.45 million. It reported losses per share of NT$3.3 in the first three quarters of last year, after registering losses of NT$2 per share in 2021 and NT$2.19 per share in 2020, the exchange said. The company, headquartered in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖), focuses on new drug development, testing and analysis services, and reagent sales. Product sales are 84.91 percent for domestic market and 15.09 percent for overseas markets, the exchange said.
LENS MAKERS
Genius revenue falls
Handset camera lens maker Genius Electronic Optical Co (玉晶光) yesterday reported that consolidated revenue last month decreased 7.52 percent month-on-month to NT$1.35 billion, as the Lunar New Year holiday cut short the number of working days and as the first quarter is traditionally a slow season for the optics industry. Although the figure was the lowest in the past seven months, it was 3.08 percent higher than a year earlier and marked the best January sales in the company’s history. Genius said it would secure more orders and step up efforts in metaverse-related products, which have become popular recently. The company is focusing on the virtual reality segment, hoping the new business would help contribute more growth momentum this year, it added.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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],”
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