EQUITIES
Foreigners sell more shares
Foreign investors last week sold a net NT$1.9 billion (US$63.7 million) of local shares after selling a net NT$40.07 billion a week earlier, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement yesterday. As of Friday, foreign investors had sold NT$954.98 billion of local shares since the beginning of the year, the exchange said. The top three shares sold by foreign investors last week were Innolux Corp (群創光電), China Steel Corp (中鋼) and China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控), while the top three shares bought by foreign investors were EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), AUO Corp (友達光電) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the exchange said. As of Friday, the market capitalization of shares held by foreign investors was NT$18.07 trillion, or 40.11 percent of total market capitalization, it said.
ELECTRONICS
Ennoconn revenue soars
Ennoconn Corp (樺漢科技), an industrial computer subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday said its revenue for last month, the second quarter and the first six months of the year all were the highest levels for the same period in the company’s history. Consolidated revenue was NT$10.39 billion last month, up 23.3 percent month-on-month and 22.9 percent year-on-year, Ennoconn said in a statement. Second-quarter revenue grew 11.4 percent quarter-on-quarter and 18.3 percent year-on-year to NT$26.98 billion, driven by the company’s design and systems integration segments, it said. Coupled with stable growth in its brand business, revenue in the first half of the year rose 19.1 percent year-on-year to NT$51.2 billion, the company said, adding that it is optimistic about its outlook for the second half.
BANKING
Multilingual ATM target set
The Financial Supervisory Commission has set a target for local banks to raise the number of multilingual ATMs to account for 50 percent of their total machines by the end of this year. The commission has also demanded that banks increase their number of bilingual branches in the domestic market, it said on Thursday last week. While the commission did not set a specific target on the number of bilingual branches, it expects the number to grow from 479 currently, it said. The anticipated increases in the number of multilingual ATMs and bilingual branches are part of the commission’s efforts to promote more inclusive financial services, which also include the setup of digital savings accounts and the use of mobile payments, it added.
PROPERTY
Pan told to go bankrupt
Distressed property tycoon Pan Sutong (潘蘇通) has been told by the Hong Kong High Court to go bankrupt, marking another blow to the former billionaire. The court ordered Pan to unwind his holding company, Silver Starlight Ltd, after he and the firm failed to pay creditors including China Citic Bank Corp (中信銀行) HK$8 billion (US$1 billion at the current exchange rate) that was due in 2019, a court filing showed on Friday. A representative for Pan yesterday said that he is appealing the order. Once among Asia’s wealthiest people, Pan fell from grace after shares of Goldin Financial Holdings Ltd (高銀金融) plunged amid a property collapse, erasing most of his US$27 billion fortune. Last month, he resigned as chairman and executive director of Goldin Financial after the sale of the firm’s flagship skyscraper collapsed.
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控) yesterday launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). ISE Labs Inc, a fully owned subsidiary of ASE, would operate the advanced testing facility. When added to its first facility in nearby Fremont, ISE would double its available research-and-development lab and business space to 150,000m2 in hopes of boosting the US semiconductor supply chain, the company said in a statement. “As the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain reshoring
The entry of chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) into the elite club of the world’s most valuable companies is further proof that the generative artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is shaking up Wall Street. TSMC, which is listed in Taipei and New York, on Monday briefly broke the US$1-trillion market capitalization barrier, putting it ahead of Tesla Inc as the seventh-most valuable technology giant on the stock market. Also on Monday, Alphabet Inc, Apple Inc and Meta Platforms Inc hit all-time highs. The top 10 of the world’s most valuable companies is headed by Microsoft Corp and Apple, closely followed by
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: The previous shooting targeting a US president or major party candidate was the 1981 incident targeting then-US president Ronald Reagan Saturday’s shooting at former US president Donald Trump’s election rally raises his odds of winning back the White House, and trades betting on his victory would increase this coming week, investors said yesterday. Trump was shot in the ear during the rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday in what the authorities were treating as an assassination attempt. Trump, his face spattered with blood, pumped his fist moments after the attack, and his campaign said he was fine after the incident. Before the shooting, markets had reacted to the prospect of a Trump presidency by pushing the US dollar higher and positioning for a
VALUE: TSMC’s market capitalization far exceeds the combined size of all the Latin American companies on MSCI Inc’s benchmark for emerging markets Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) US$420 billion equity rally this year would get a valuation test this week when it reports earnings, with analysts expecting the chipmaker to raise full-year sales forecasts. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker would probably report a 29 percent increase in second-quarter net income on Thursday, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. More importantly, analysts from JPMorgan Chase & Co to Morgan Stanley expect it to also raise its full-year sales guidance, justifying another round of valuation expansion. Just like Nvidia Corp, TSMC has become a favorite artificial intelligence (AI)-bet for investors with