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.
SELL-OFF: Investors expect tariff-driven volatility as the local boarse reopens today, while analysts say government support and solid fundamentals would steady sentiment Local investors are bracing for a sharp market downturn today as the nation’s financial markets resume trading following a two-day closure for national holidays before the weekend, with sentiment rattled by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement. Trump’s unveiling of new “reciprocal tariffs” on Wednesday triggered a sell-off in global markets, with the FTSE Taiwan Index Futures — a benchmark for Taiwanese equities traded in Singapore — tumbling 9.2 percent over the past two sessions. Meanwhile, the American depositary receipts (ADRs) of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the most heavily weighted stock on the TAIEX, plunged 13.8 percent in
A wave of stop-loss selling and panic selling hit Taiwan's stock market at its opening today, with the weighted index plunging 2,086 points — a drop of more than 9.7 percent — marking the largest intraday point and percentage loss on record. The index bottomed out at 19,212.02, while futures were locked limit-down, with more than 1,000 stocks hitting their daily drop limit. Three heavyweight stocks — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (Foxconn, 鴻海精密) and MediaTek (聯發科) — hit their limit-down prices as soon as the market opened, falling to NT$848 (US$25.54), NT$138.5 and NT$1,295 respectively. TSMC's
TARIFFS: The global ‘panic atmosphere remains strong,’ and foreign investors have continued to sell their holdings since the start of the year, the Ministry of Finance said The government yesterday authorized the activation of its NT$500 billion (US$15.15 billion) National Stabilization Fund (NSF) to prop up the local stock market after two days of sharp falls in reaction to US President Donald Trump’s new import tariffs. The Ministry of Finance said in a statement after the market close that the steering committee of the fund had been given the go-ahead to intervene in the market to bolster Taiwanese shares in a time of crisis. The fund has been authorized to use its assets “to carry out market stabilization tasks as appropriate to maintain the stability of Taiwan’s
In a small town in Paraguay, a showdown is brewing between traditional producers of yerba mate, a bitter herbal tea popular across South America, and miners of a shinier treasure: gold. A rush for the precious metal is pitting mate growers and indigenous groups against the expanding operations of small-scale miners who, until recently, were their neighbors, not nemeses. “They [the miners] have destroyed everything... The canals, springs, swamps,” said Vidal Britez, president of the Yerba Mate Producers’ Association of the town of Paso Yobai, about 210km east of capital Asuncion. “You can see the pollution from the dead fish.
RSS