Shares of major light-emitting-diode (LED) chipmakers, led by Epistar Corp (晶電), rallied yesterday on speculation that the government is planning to invest NT$50 billion (US$1.48 billion) to develop key green industries, including LED.
The share prices of leading LED chipmakers — Epistar and Formosa Epitaxy Inc (璨圓光電) — surged 6.93 percent and 7 percent to close at NT$61.7 and NT$26.75 respectively, outpacing the benchmark TAIEX, which gained 1.3 percent yesterday.
As part of the government’s efforts to expand the scope of its NT$500 billion public construction program, the Cabinet plans to allocate 10 percent of the spending to the adoption of devices powered by renewable energy like solar cells, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing Minister of the Public Construction Commission Fan Liang-shiow (范良銹).
The National Development Fund would prioritize the nation’s green energy industries as its investment targets to sharpen local companies’ technological edge, the report said, citing unnamed government officials.
The Cabinet is expected to give the go-ahead to the proposal in its weekly meeting next Thursday, the report said.
The news also sent the share prices of LED chip packagers Everlight Electronics Co (億光電子) and Unity Opto Technology Co (東貝光電) up 4.27 percent and 6.84 percent to close at NT$68.3 and NT$22.65 respectively.
LED can be widely used in a broad range of lighting applications, such as displays in electronic devices, road signs, traffic lights, large public information screens and video displays.
The global market for LEDs is likely to more than double in size by 2012 from last year’s US$5 billion as an increasing number of countries and consumers switch to energy-saving lights to cut expenses and reduce carbon emissions, a forecast by Taipei-based researcher LEDinside released last week said.
LEDinside forecast that the LED penetration rate in notebook computers could rise to more than 60 percent by next year as PC makers launch more models with LED backlight screens, replacing cold cathode fluorescent lamps as the screen’s light source.
Taiwan is the world’s second-largest LED exporter with a quarter of the global market share after Japan, the market researcher said.
LEDs reduce energy consumption by emitting light from a chip rather than an incandescent filament in a light bulb, or charged gases in a fluorescent light tube. LEDs use about a tenth of the energy of an incandescent bulb and can last a decade or longer.
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
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
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