INVESTMENT
Foreigners net buyers
Foreign investors last week bought a net NT$42.43 billion (US$1.54 billion) of local shares after buying a net NT$29.96 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had bought NT$72.39 billion of local shares since the beginning of this year, it said. Last week, the top three shares that foreign investors bought were Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), while the top three sold were Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) and SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控), the exchange said. As of Friday, the market cap of shares held by foreign investors was NT$25.22 trillion, or 44.27 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
ELECTRONICS
Ichia profit rises 6 percent
Flexible printed circuit board and handset keypad maker Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉科技) yesterday reported pretax profit of NT$67.25 million for last quarter, up 6 percent from a year earlier, while revenue rose 4.3 percent year-on-year to NT$1.61 billion. The company said orders remained strong in the October-to-December quarter on the back of robust demand from clients in the automotive electronics and consumer electronics businesses. However, shipments were curtailed by a shortage of raw materials in the supply chain, causing gross margin to fall to 12 percent from 14 percent a year earlier. For the whole of last year, pretax profit rose 41 percent year-on-year to NT$267 million
APPAREL
Makalot income surges 25%
Makalot Industrial Co Ltd (聚陽) yesterday reported that pretax income last year rose 25.1 percent annually to NT$3.4 billion, as it continued to improve its product mix and raise its gross margin, despite the COVID-19 pandemic affecting operations in regional supply chains. Earnings per share were NT$14.33 last year, the highest in the company’s history. The manufacturer of ready-to-wear apparel said that its revenue for last year expanded 16.1 percent to NT$28.93 billion.
E-COMMERCE
EHS earnings hit record
Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure Co (EHS, 東森購物) yesterday reported record earnings per share of NT$17.7 for last year, up from the previous year’s NT$14.11, as revenue from online sales increased 47 percent from NT$7.2 billion to NT$10.6 billion, the company said. Last year, consolidated revenue increased 14.7 percent to NT$28.32 billion, it said. For this year, EHS said it aims to boost online sales to NT$24 billion and lift overall revenue to NT$45.6 billion on the back of contributions from TV shopping and telemarketing, it added.
ELECTRONICS
Qisda secures new loans
Electronics maker Qisda Inc (佳世達) on Thursday said that it had secured two new sustainability-linked loans totaling about NT$1.83 billion from E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) and DBS Bank Ltd’s (星展銀行) Taipei branch. The lenders would track Qisda’s sustainability performance over a two-year period and provide preferential interest rates, a company statement said. The electronics maker has accumulated NT$14 billion in sustainability-linked loans, along with NT$12 billion of such loans obtained from Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) and First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) last year.
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
LIMITED MEASURES: The proposed restrictions on Chinese chip exports are weaker than previously considered, following lobbying by major US firms, sources said US President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing additional curbs on sales of semiconductor equipment and artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips to China that would escalate the US crackdown on Beijing’s tech ambitions, but stop short of some stricter measures previously considered, said sources familiar with the matter. The restrictions could be unveiled as soon as next week, said the sources, who emphasized that the timing and contours of the rules have changed several times, and that nothing is final until they are published. The measures follow months of deliberations by US officials, negotiations with allies in Japan and the Netherlands, and
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has retired from the company and stepped down from its board of directors just as the company is in the middle of trying to execute a turnaround plan. Intel chief financial officer David Zinsner and Intel Products CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus are serving as interim co-CEOs while the board searches for Gelsinger’s replacement, the company said in a statement. Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel, is to serve as interim executive chair, the company said. Gelsinger’s departure is hitting at a tumultuous time for the US chipmaker. Once the industry leader in
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