EQUITIES
Foreigners sell NT$9.59bn
Foreign institutional investors last week sold a net NT$9.59 billion (US$313.6 million) of local shares, after selling a net NT$9.28 billion the previous week, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said yesterday. The top three shares sold by foreign investors last week were Walsin Lihwa Corp (華新麗華), First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) and China Steel Corp (中鋼), while the top three bought by foreign investors were Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) and Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), the exchange said in a statement. As of Friday last week, foreign investors had bought NT$216.77 billion of local shares since the beginning of this year, while the market capitalization of the shares held by foreign investors was NT$19.84 trillion, or 40.64 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
UMC revenue hits new low
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) yesterday said revenue last month contracted by 18.64 percent to NT$16.93 billion from a year earlier, the lowest in 22 months. Last month’s figure was down 13.56 percent from the previous month, it said. During the first two months of this year, revenue dropped 11.53 percent year-on-year to NT$36.52 billion, UMC said in a statement, as the chipmaker’s wafer shipments were affected by the inventory adjustments.
BATTERIES
BizLink revenue decreases
BizLink Holding Inc (貿聯控股), the sole supplier of wiring harnesses for battery management systems used in Tesla Inc’s electric vehicles (EV), yesterday said revenue decreased 1.47 percent annually to NT$4.08 billion last month. The company’s revenue in the first two months rose 11.04 percent to NT$8.08 billion on an annual basis. BizLink said orders from semiconductor customers weakened last month. By product, shipments of components used in data centers dropped, but the EV segment was the bright spot with shipments continuing to increase, while shipments of components used in industrial devices showed strong momentum, it said.
AVIATION
StarLux secures Airbus loan
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) yesterday reached a NT$4.06 billion syndicated loan agreement with 11 local banks to fund the purchase of a second Airbus 350-900 passenger jet. It was the second syndicated loan for Starlux, after the airline secured a NT$3.82 billion syndicated loan with 10 banks in September last year to fund the purchase of its first Airbus 350-900. The new loan was 92 percent oversubscribed by the banks, led by Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合庫銀行), the airline said.
SHIPPING
Wisdom posts pretax losses
Wisdom Marine Lines Co (慧洋海運) last month turned a loss for the first time in 31 months due to declining freight rates amid a gloomy market. The bulk shipper on Friday reported a pretax loss of NT$195 million, from a pretax profit of NT$649 million a year earlier, while revenue decreased 43 percent to NT$924 million. For the first two months of this year, cumulative pretax losses were NT$165 million, with losses per share of NT$0.22, it said. Wisdom said freight rates had bottomed out in the middle of last month and might start to improve this month. The shipper expects freight rates to hold up in the second quarter, which is usually a peak season for transportation of South American grains.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
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