State-run First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) said it is looking to benefit from interest rate hikes in Taiwan and abroad, even though corporate and retail clients have turned conservative about financing.
The bank-focused conglomerate shared its business outlook with an online investors’ conference earlier this week.
The company has raised its loan growth target for small and medium-sized enterprises from between 6 to 7 percent to 7 to 8 percent, and that for overseas lending from 10 to 11 percent to 12 to 13 percent, it said.
The wealth management business could post 8 to 9 percent growth, helping fee income gain at the same pace, First Financial spokeswoman Anne Lee (李淑玲) said.
Interest rate hikes in March of 0.25 percentage points in Taiwan and the US are expected to boost interest income by NT$2.2 billion (US$74.9 million), with further momentum anticipated in the second half of the year.
The US Federal Reserve has made clear that it would raise interest rates by 0.5 percentage points this month and next month, Lee said.
The local central bank could follow suit, although at a milder pace, to flight inflation, slow capital flight and stabilize the local currency, she said.
Lending operations have slowed as corporate and retail customers have shown hesitancy about increasing their financial leverage, she added.
The cautious sentiment is expected to dissipate after interest rate hikes bring down inflation and provide consumers with enough confidence to resume spending, Lee said.
Interest rate hikes are also favorable for selling fixed-income investment tools and the group would highlight such wealth management products to clients, she said.
By contrast, mortgage operations could increase by a middle-single-digit percentage due to selective credit controls, Lee said.
The housing market would consolidate eventually, but with a slim chance of price corrections given that developers are factoring in soaring costs of building materials along with a labor shortage, she said.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS