EQUITIES
Foreigners buy NT$48.5bn
Foreign investors last week bought a net NT$48.5 billion (US$1.76 billion) of local shares after buying a net NT$19.53 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Thursday, foreign investors had sold an accumulated NT$454.09 billion of local shares since the beginning of last year, it said. Last week, the top three shares bought by foreign investors were United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), Innolux Corp (群創) and China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), while the top three sold were AcBel Polytech Inc (康舒科技), Kinpo Electronics Inc (金寶電子) and Walton Advanced Engineering Inc (華東科技), the exchange said. As of Thursday, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$24.44 trillion, or 43.48 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
CHPT revenue up 26.69%
Chunghwa Precision Test Technology Co (CHPT, 中華精測), a supplier of probe cards used for silicon wafer testing, yesterday reported that its revenue grew 26.69 percent annually to NT$423 million last month, the second-highest monthly sales figure in the company’s history. Customers were stockpiling 5G chips and market demand for high-performance computing chips rebounded, the company said. Last month’s figure boosted its fourth-quarter revenue 14.8 percent to NT$1.27 billion, from NT$1.11 billion in the third quarter. For the whole of last year, revenue edged up 0.78 percent to a record NT$4.24 billion from NT$4.21 billion in 2020.
SEMICONDUCTORS
TMC buys back 4.5m shares
Taiwan Mask Corp (TMC, 台灣光罩), a supplier of photomasks used to make semiconductors for silicon wafers, yesterday said it had bought back 4.485 million of its own shares over the past two months for NT$413 million. The number of repurchased shares accounted for 74.75 percent of the shares that the firm had planned to acquire on the open market to bolster its share price, TMC said in a regulatory filing. On Nov. 4, TMC began the buyback scheme, aiming to repurchase up to 6 million shares at NT$62 to NT$110 per share. The average repurchase price was NT$92.25, compared with the firm’s closing share price of NT$108 yesterday.
ELECTRONICS
Ichia’s annual revenue rises
Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉科技) yesterday reported revenue of NT$539 million for last month, an annual decline of 3 percent, due to a shortage of raw materials and the effects of inventory adjustments. Sales generated from flexible printed circuit integrated components reached NT$389 million last month, accounting for 72.17 percent of total sales, with the remainder coming from mechanical integrated components, it said. Despite the shortage of raw materials, Ichia reported consolidated revenue of NT$6.48 million for last year, up 17.73 percent from 2020 and the highest in three years.
STANDING HEAD
Microsoft releases e-mail fix
Microsoft Corp on Sunday offered a solution to a bug that caused some e-mail messages to become stuck on its Exchange platforms due to what it said was a New Year-related date-checking failure. The problem was not security-related, the company said in a blog post. A subsequent update gave two fixes, one that could be applied to all of a client’s servers and another that needed to be applied manually to individual servers. The bug caused messages to get stuck in transport queues on Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2019, it said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) halted shipments to a customer this month after its semiconductors were sent to China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為), potentially breaching US sanctions, a government official said. The US slapped sanctions on Huawei in 2019, and expanded them the following year, over fears its technology could be used for Beijing’s espionage operations. The restrictions prevent TSMC from selling semiconductors to Huawei. However, TSMC discovered on Oct. 11 that chips made for a “specific customer” had ended up with the Chinese company, a Taiwanese official with knowledge of the incident said on the condition of anonymity. TSMC “immediately activated
US SANCTIONS: The Taiwan tech giant has ended all shipments to China-based Sophgo Technologies after one of their chips was discovered in a Huawei phone Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) suspended shipments to China-based chip designer Sophgo Technologies Ltd (算能科技) after a chip it made was found on a Huawei Technologies Co (華為) artificial intelligence (AI) processor, according to two people familiar with the matter. Sophgo had ordered chips from TSMC that matched the one found on Huawei’s Ascend 910B, the people said. Huawei is restricted from buying the technology to protect US national security. Reuters could not determine how the chip ended up on the Huawei product. Sophgo said in a statement on its Web site yesterday that it was in compliance with all laws
TECH TITANS: Nvidia briefly overtook Apple again on Friday after becoming the world’s largest company for a short period in June, as Microsoft fell to third place Nvidia Corp dethroned Apple Inc as the world’s most valuable company on Friday following a record-setting rally in the stock, powered by insatiable demand for its specialized artificial intelligence (AI) chips. Nvidia’s stock market value briefly touched US$3.53 trillion, slightly above Apple’s US$3.52 trillion, London Stock Exchange Group data showed. Nvidia ended the day up 0.8 percent, with a market value of US$3.47 trillion, while Apple’s shares rose 0.4 percent, valuing the iPhone maker at US$3.52 trillion. In June, Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company before it was overtaken by Microsoft Corp and Apple. The tech trio’s market capitalizations have been
Shares of Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) surged more than 53 percent on its debut on the Taiwan stock exchange yesterday. Starlux shares closed up 53.75 percent at NT$30.75 from its initial public offering price of NT$20 after retreating in late trading from a 60 percent rise. China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) rose 0.90 percent to close at NT$22.35, while EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) gained 0.40 percent to close at NT$37.70. In Taiwan, a newly listed stock is allowed to go beyond the 10 percent maximum increase or decline in its first five trading sessions. At the listing ceremony, Starlux chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) said
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