The number of initial public offerings (IPOs) this year might more than double to 60, from 28 last year, as the local capital market is gaining traction, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, consulting firm Deloitte Taiwan said yesterday.
Deloitte Taiwan gave the optimistic projection after 75 firms joined the Emerging Stock Board, a preliminary market before IPO, audit and assurance business leader Titan Lee (李東峰) said, adding that virus outbreaks might delay the timetable, but would not deter participation.
High-tech, electronics and biotechnology firms are expected to dominate IPO activity, as Taiwan is home to the world’s major electronics suppliers and the government is supporting biotechnology firms, Lee said.
Photo courtesy of Deloitte Taiwan
“The biotechnology sector has evolved into a new cluster of its own and gathered steam amid the virus outbreaks,” he said.
Biotechnology firms would remain popular even though the industry is going through a structural change, he said.
Besides earnings ability, investors are increasingly including non-financial factors, such as environmental protection, social responsibility and sustainable governance, in their analyses to identify risks and growth opportunities, Deloitte Taiwan said, urging companies to respond and adjust.
Cybersecurity also demands attention, as Taiwanese authorities require companies with capitalization of more than NT$10 billion (US$362 million) to set up an information security division staffed by professionals in the field by the end of this year, it said.
The number of IPOs last year held steady from a year earlier, but they raised NT$32.1 billion, the highest in six years, led by contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電), which raked in NT$7.69 billion, or 24 percent of the total, while Advanced Energy Solution Holding Co was second with NT$4.78 billion, Deloitte Taiwan said.
Deloitte Taiwan last year accounted for 50 percent of the local IPO market by helping 14 companies list their shares, it added.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS