The manufacturing industry’s business climate monitor in October flashed “yellow-blue” for a fourth consecutive month, indicating sluggishness, as the operating environment and demand picked up, but selling prices and input budget dropped further, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) said yesterday.
The composite index compiled by the Taipei-based think tank gained 0.76 points to 11.59, indicating listless manufacturing activity, as inventory adjustments lingered due to weak end-market demand.
TIER uses five levels to capture the industry’s cyclical movements, with “red” indicating a boom, “green” suggesting steady growth and “blue” signifying a downturn.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Yellow-blue indicates a tepid state and yellow-red a pickup in growth momentum.
Manufacturers that reported a decline in business eased from 40.87 percent in September to 30.36 percent in October, while firms that experienced a slowdown dropped from 50.22 percent to 41.92 percent, the monthly survey found.
Companies whose business remained steady increased from 7.87 percent to 26.79 percent, while firms that reported an increase slid from 1.04 percent to 0.93 percent, it said, adding that none saw a boom.
Electronics companies said that business was steady, as robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services lifted the suppliers of servers and graphic cards by double-digit percentage points, TIER said.
That helped offset continued inventory corrections at chipmakers and optical device vendors, it said.
The AI bonus underpinned the uptick in subindices of operating conditions, demand and costs, while sticky global inflation and restrictive monetary policies continued to weigh on other subindices, such as selling prices and input spending, the institute said.
Suppliers of transportation tools and auto parts also said that business was steady, backed by healthy auto sales in Taiwan, it said.
Furthermore, a growing number of Taiwanese firms are taking part in the global supply chains of electric vehicles (EVs) and benefited from increasing EV demand in China and the US, TIER said.
Textile and paper product makers remained mired in a recession, as a global slowdown curtailed demand and rivals from China cut prices to win customers, the institute said.
The Israel-Hamas war boosted international oil prices and benefitted local petrochemical product makers, lifting their business climate gauge from blue to yellow-blue.
Base metal suppliers floundered due to soft restocking demand from downstream customers, stopping them from buying input materials, the institute said.
Metal product vendors fared better, thanks to demand from consumer electronics gadgets ahead of the holiday season, it said.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
RSS