ELECTRONICS
Largan shares face pressure
Shares of Largan Precision Co (大立光) came under pressure on the stock’s ex-dividend date yesterday and failed to regain ground lost after the company’s dividend was deducted from the share price. The ex-dividend date is when a stock begins trading without a declaration on the previous year’s earnings. Largan last year issued a cash dividend of NT$79 per share on its earnings per share (EPS) of NT$210.7, so its shares yesterday began trading at NT$3,921, compared with a closing price of NT$4,000 the previous session, but they could not maintain that level, closing down 0.89 percent at NT$3,885. Analysts watch how quickly a stock returns to its price prior to the ex-dividend date to get a feel for investor expectations and their willingness to hold on to the stock. The TAIEX yesterday fell 113.81 points, or 0.88 percent, to 12,780.19 on turnover of NT$205.419 billion (US$6.96 billion). Foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$5.04 billion of local shares, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
ECONOMY
Voucher exchanges hit NT$19bn
As of Monday, local businesses had exchanged NT$19 billion of Triple Stimulus Vouchers at banks or post offices, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday, after previously estimating that the government program would generate more than NT$100 billion. From July 23 to Monday, about NT$1 billion of vouchers were exchanged by local businesses, Small and Medium Enterprise Administration Director-General Ho Chin-tsang (何晉滄) said. As of 5pm yesterday, about 19.28 million people had claimed their vouchers in paper form and 1.76 million had claimed them electronically since the government started issuing the vouchers on July 15, ministry statistics showed.
INVESTMENT
Bonds draw NT$25m
The central bank at an auction yesterday sold NT$25 billion in 10-year bonds with a yield of 0.37 percent — the lowest in its history — indicating that market liquidity is still abundant, it said. The sale of the securities, which mature on June 11, 2030, attracted bids for 2.31 times the amount of debt on offer, the bank said in a statement, adding that the yield for the previous sale of 10-year bonds in June was 0.477 percent. The Ministry of Finance commissioned the central bank to auction the bonds. The banking industry accounted for 56.4 percent of the winning bids, followed by the securities sector (34.4 percent), the insurance industry (5.8 percent), and the bill sector (3.4 percent), central bank data showed.
SEMICONDUCTORS
TSMC approves dividend
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) board of directors yesterday approved the distribution of a cash dividend of NT$2.5 per share for the second quarter and set Dec. 23 as the record date for common-stock shareholders entitled to participate in the distribution. The ex-dividend date for the common shares is set for Dec. 17, TSMC said in a statement. The board approved capital appropriations of US$5.27 billion for the installation of advanced equipment, capacity expansion and plant construction, as well as the issuance of US dollar-denominated unsecured corporate bonds for an amount not to exceed US$1 billion, it said. Its board approved the promotion of business development vice president Kevin Zhang (張曉強) to senior vice president, it said.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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