EQUITIES
Shares drop on US concerns
Local shares moved lower yesterday as turnover shrank ahead of the conclusion of a two-day policymaking meeting of the US Federal Reserve due later yesterday. Investors remained cautious throughout the session, with many wary of financial woes in the US banking sector, which pushed down shares on US markets overnight. The TAIEX closed down 83.07 points, or 0.53 percent, at 15,553.41, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Turnover totaled NT$201.379 billion (US$6.55 billion), down from NT$224.355 billion on Tuesday, with foreign institutional investors selling a net NT$9.12 billion of shares on the main board, the exchange said.
ELECTRONICS
HTC posts reduced loss
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday reported yet another quarterly loss in the first quarter of this year, although it was its lowest loss in seven quarters. The company reported a net loss of NT$680 million in the January-to-March period, down from a net loss of NT$930 million a quarter earlier. Losses per share were NT$0.82, compared with NT$1.12 three months earlier. Dragged by its struggling smartphone business, HTC has reported a net loss nearly every quarter since the second quarter of 2015, except for the first quarter of 2018, when an asset sale helped it post a quarterly net profit. Gross margin continued to climb in the first quarter to 40.8 percent from 40.5 percent in the previous quarter, while revenue fell from NT$1.22 billion to NT$980 million over the period.
SHIPPING
TNC plans NT$2.2 payout
Taiwan Navigation Co’s (TNC, 台灣航業) board of directors yesterday proposed a cash dividend distribution of NT$2.2 per share, its highest payout since 2010. The planned dividend represents a payout ratio of 45.5 percent based on earning per share (EPS) of NT$4.83 last year. However, the bulk shipper saw net profit fall in the first quarter due to hikes in interest expenses and foreign exchange losses. Net profit declined 43 percent from a year earlier to NT$140 million, with EPS of NT$0.34. The shipper said it is cautious about its business outlook, citing a patchy economic recovery in China, ongoing trade tensions between China and the US, and global economic uncertainty, which might cause a sharp decline in the demand for bulk goods and negatively affect the rebound of freight rates for shippers.
INSURANCE
COVID-19 claims drop 70%
Non-life insurance companies’ COVID-19 insurance claims fell 70 percent last month from a month earlier to NT$3.33 billion, the lowest they have been this year, Financial Supervisory Commission data showed on Tuesday. The decrease in COVID-19 insurance claims came as the Central Epidemic Command Center in late March tightened its definition for confirmed COVID-19 cases to people with severe symptoms or those who need oxygen therapy. As of last month, total COVID-19 insurance claims had reached NT$268.3 billion since January last year, the commission’s data showed. The considerable payouts have added pressure to insurers’ bottom lines, with their combined net losses amounting to NT$167.7 billion last year, the commission said. To boost their capital adequacy, several insurers have raised NT$112.5 billion in fresh funds and three insurers are expected to inject another NT$30 billion by next month, it said.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
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
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