TAIEX rally runs out of steam
Taiwanese shares closed 0.47 percent lower yesterday as construction sector and some industrial stocks fell, dealers said.
The market opened higher following gains on Wall Street overnight and a drop in oil prices, but lost steam later despite a mild bounce in the technology sector, dealers said.
The weighted index closed down 42.50 points at 8,947.83, off a high of 9,062.97 and low of 8,945.22, on turnover of NT$149.52 billion (US$4.93 billion).
Decliners outnumbered advancers 1,670 to 671, with 321 stocks unchanged. A total of 19 stocks closed limit-up, while 21 were limit-down.
For the week to yesterday, the weighted index closed down 126.51 points, or 1.39 percent, after a 1.85 percent increase a week earlier.
Average daily turnover stood at NT$156.94 billion, compared with NT$194.43 billion a week earlier.
Prosecutors probe FX deal
Taiwanese prosecutors may question Goldman Sachs Group Inc executives as part of a probe into a 10-year foreign-currency derivatives contract the company signed with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s largest phone operator.
“We will question Goldman if we think it will help us understand the case,” Lin Chin-chun (林錦村), a spokesman for the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, said by telephone yesterday.
Prosecutors on Wednesday questioned six Chunghwa executives, including chief financial officer Joseph Shieh (謝劍平), as witnesses in connection with the contract to hedge against volatility in the US dollar-NT dollar exchange rate, Lin said.
Officials are probing whether the deal involved illegal activity and why the contract, signed in September last year, lasts for 10 years instead of the usual two to three, he said.
Chunghwa Telecom said on March 5 it wrote off NT$3 billion for losses from a foreign-currency derivatives contract that fell in value as the NT dollar appreciated.
Government honors inspectors
The government held an award ceremony yesterday to honor 10 of the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) 300 inspectors as part of a series of events to mark World Intellectual Property Day.
Wang Mei-hua (王美花), director-general of the office, stressed that innovation and IP protection were necessary to develop a knowledge-based economy.
She said the IPO needs to deal with about 80,000 patent and IP applications per year, but has only 300 inspectors to evaluate them, an indication of the inspectors’ heavy workload.
Between 2001 and 2005, Taiwan ranked third in the world in the number of innovative patents registered, averaging 242 per million people, lagging only behind the US and Japan.
Faraday profits disappoint
Shares in Faraday Technology Corp (智原科技), the second-worst performing chip designer on the Taiwan Stock Exchange for the past six months, fell in Taipei after profits missed estimates and Fubon Securities Co (富邦證券) downgraded the stock.
The firm on Thursday posted a first-quarter profit of NT$214 million, lower than all three analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Faraday previously forecast full-year sales would increase 15 percent to 20 percent this year, even though they would be little changed in the first half, Fubon analyst Mike Shen wrote yesterday.
NT dollar closes lower
The NT dollar fell against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, dropping NT$0.043 to close at NT$30.340.
US$1.24 billion changed hands yesterday.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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