EQUITIES
Investors pocket profits
The TAIEX closed slightly lower yesterday after initial gains were erased amid lingering caution caused by the US Federal Reserve’s hawkish outlook. The bellwether electronics sector gave up an earlier upturn as fears of further volatility among tech stocks on the US markets prompted investors to lock in their profits. The TAIEX closed down 26.70 points, or 0.18 percent, at 15,069.19. Turnover totaled NT$178.284 billion (US$5.89 billion), with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$10.59 billion of shares on the main board after a net sell of NT$16.76 billion on Tuesday, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
ELECTRONICS
Weak demand hits Innolux
Flat-panel maker Innolux Corp (群創) has encouraged employees to take an extra five days off over the Mid-Autumn Festival and Double Ten National Day holidays, the company said in a statement yesterday. Innolux aims to reduce its factory utilization rate to as low as 50 percent during the second half of this year in response to weak customer demand, the company said. Production line employees are to work a flexible rotation scheme based on adjustments to the usage of the production line, it said. The company’s statement came after an employee wrote to the Chinese-language Apple Daily, accusing the company of forcing workers to take annual leave.
STEELMAKERS
CSC’s pre-tax income dives
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼) said its pre-tax income plummeted 39 percent to NT$2.61 billion last month from NT$4.29 billion in June, due to a reduction in carbon steel sales and a lower gross margin. The Kaohsiung-based firm sold 683,834 tonnes of steel last month, down 15.26 percent from 806,975 tonnes in June, it said in a statement released on Tuesday. During the first seven months of this year, the steelmaker accumulated NT$31.51 billion in pre-tax income, down 29 percent from NT$44.29 billion during the same period last year. However, revenue rose 13 percent year-on-year from NT$255.15 billion to NT$288 billion during the January-to-July period, it said.
BROKERAGES
Firms’ net income up 74%
Securities firms in Taiwan reported combined net income of NT$5.202 billion last month, up 73.92 percent from June, as a decline in brokerage fee income was offset by increases in dealers’ trading income and underwriting income, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said on Monday. The exchange attributed the decline in fee income to a drop in securities transactions last month, when trading fell 4.96 percent month-on-month to NT$4.832 trillion. In the first seven months of this year, the accumulated net income of securities firms was NT$23.655 billion, down 65.37 percent from the same period last year.
BROKERAGES
China Merchants IPOs halted
Chinese bourses have stopped processing more than 20 initial public offering (IPO) plans sponsored by China Merchants Securities Co (招商證券) following an investigation into the broker, exchange disclosures showed. Since Friday last week, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange has suspended 15 IPO plans for its ChiNext board, while the Shanghai exchange has paused five IPO plans for its STAR Market. Three other IPOs targeting the Beijing Stock Exchange were also affected. The bourses attributed the halts to an investigation by authorities into China Merchants Securities’ poor due diligence and rule contraventions.
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
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
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.
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