EQUITIES
Fears send TAIEX plunging
The TAIEX took a beating yesterday, tumbling almost 300 points, as market sentiment was roiled by fears of potential rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve and over military tensions between Russia and Ukraine. The bellwether electronics sector came under heavy downward pressure, falling 1.61 percent, with the semiconductor subindex down 1.75 percent, led by contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). The TAIEX closed down 287.92 points, or 1.60 percent, at 17,701.12. Turnover totaled NT$269.410 billion (US$9.72 billion), with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$47.35 billion of shares on the main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. TSMC lost 1.84 percent to close at NT$641, and its losses contributed about 100 points to the TAIEX’s decline.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Powerchip outlook upbeat
Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) yesterday said it is optimistic about its operations this year. It expects annual revenue to increase 21.9 percent to more than NT$80 billion on the back of rising average selling prices, while net profit is forecast to grow 24.3 percent to more than NT$20 billion. Last year’s operating performance was in line with expectations, with revenue of NT$65.62 billion, gross margin of 42 percent and net profit of NT$16.09 billion, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told an online investors’ conference. That translated into earnings per share of NT$4.92, Huang said. At present, 70 to 80 percent of the company’s memory and logic production capacity has been booked by customers, he said. Product prices would not rise as much as last year, with average selling prices likely to increase by 5 to 10 percent, Huang said.
MANUFACTURING
Wah Lee buys 13 plots
Wah Lee Industrial Corp (華立), a supplier of industrial materials and equipment, yesterday said it has purchased several plots of land in Tainan, as it plans to set up a southern logistics center there. The company said in a regulatory filing that it has acquired 13 plots for about NT$1.2 billion. Wah Lee said its board of directors had authorized the firm’s chairman to handle price negotiations, payment terms and the signing of contracts for the purchase. As the company cannot register farming and grazing land under its name, it has temporarily registered the land under Wah Lee chief executive officer Gary Chang’s (張尊賢) name, it said, adding that it has taken all necessary precautionary measures to protect the rights of the company.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Hon Hai to redraw prizes
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said that some of its employees were not able to join prize draws during an annual online event on Sunday due to a system malfunction. To protect the rights and interests of the affected employees, the company would redraw prizes for them, with the original prize winners remaining unchanged, Hon Hai said in a statement. Local media reported yesterday that some of Hon Hai’s employees were excluded from the prize draws, which included vehicles and cash, due to problems importing the lottery list into the company’s lottery system. Hon Hai said that it provided employees who did not win any prize draws with a participation award of NT$16,888 each.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
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