EQUITIES
TAIEX falls 0.62 percent
The TAIEX yesterday closed lower as market sentiment remained cautious due to lingering concerns over moves by central banks worldwide to tighten monetary policy, dealers said. Selling was seen across the board, focusing particularly on transportation and financial shares, while the bellwether electronics sector was somewhat resilient, they said. Bucking the downturn on the TAIEX, biotechnology stocks attracted buying on a spike in domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases, they added. The TAIEX closed down 105.31 points, or 0.62 percent, at 16,898.87. Turnover totaled NT$228.800 billion (US$7.84 billion), with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$10.42 billion of shares, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. The electronics sector fell 0.11 percent, with the semiconductor sub-index down only 0.08 percent, while the transportation sector fell 2.70 percent and the financial sector lost 2.05 percent.
EQUITIES
Foreign sell-off continues
Foreign investors last week sold a net NT$55.59 billion of local shares after selling a net NT$83.02 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold NT$608.4 billion of local shares from the beginning of the year, it said. Last week, the top three shares foreign investors sold were United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), while the top three shares they bought were China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), Ta Chen Stainless Pipe Co (大成不銹鋼) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), the exchange said. As of Friday, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$21.6 trillion, or 40.97 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
AIRLINES
Tigerair to sell NFTs
Low-cost carrier Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航) yesterday announced plans to sell non-fungible tokens (NFT) of images of its tiger mascot. In a statement, Tigerair said that the NFTs, which are being produced in cooperation with Taiwan’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform, MaiCoin Ltd (現代財富科技), would go on sale next month. Those who buy the NFTs will get the chance to go on a trip to France to take part in the delivery of an A320neo plane, the airline said. In addition, buyers will also get the right to fly with Tigerair in unoccupied seats as a crew member by paying only the taxes. Tigerair chairman Chen Han-ming (陳漢銘) said that NFTs, a unique cryptographic token that can be associated with reproducible digital files such as photographs, videos and audio, are beginning to be seen as a viable way to sell digital art.
SEMICONDUCTORS
PRC production shrinks
China’s quarterly production of semiconductors shrank for the first time since early 2019 as demand for consumer electronics softened and COVID-19 lockdowns in regions, including Shanghai, disrupted output. Output of integrated circuits dropped 4.2 percent in the first three months of the year as chipmakers reported a steeper decline last month, National Bureau of Statistics data showed. It was the worst quarterly performance since the first quarter of 2019 when the nation’s chip output slumped 8.7 percent. Demand for smartphones, PCs and TVs has been hurt by China’s lockdown measures, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) chairman to Mark Liu (劉德音) said.
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
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