State-run Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (CHB, 彰化銀行) said yesterday it is looking at stable profit growth this year on the back of improving loan demand, as exports and private investments come out of the woods after several quarters of inventory adjustments.
“We aim to increase outstanding loans by 3 to 5 percent this year, faster than last year’s 3.9 percent advance,” CHB spokeswoman Wang Shwu-fang (王淑芬) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
Taiwanese firms would display more interest in capital spending and capacity expansion, as exports steadily emerge from technology product adjustments, Wang said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The lender reported that net income last year grew 18.33 percent year-on-year to NT$12.98 billion (US$406.95 million), or earnings per share of NT$1.2.
Net interest margin shed 2 basis points to 0.82 percent at the end of last year, as high borrowing costs curbed loan demand.
Taiwan’s interest rate remains quite low compared with that of the US, which is favorable for foreign exchange swaps, a major profit driver in recent years and hopefully in the first half of this year, Wang said.
CHB expects the US Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates in June to avoid an economic hard landing, she said.
As for investments, the lender said it would raise its stake in US bonds in batches to expand fixed income, and increase holdings in stocks that pay generous cash dividends and support environmental protection and social responsibility.
While focusing on corporate banking, CHB is looking to gain market share in mortgage operations and land financing, it said.
Property development might slow slightly this year, but housing transactions would pick up, buoyed by first-home purchases to take advantage of the government’s interest subsidy, it said.
Developers are likely to slow new project launches and prioritize digesting unsold houses, as authorities have no intention of easing credit controls, CHB said, adding that it would still focus on urban renewal projects this year.
CHB is seeking to boost profit contributions from overseas to 30 percent this year, from 11 percent last year, Wang said.
Its branch in Hong Kong is expected to generate the largest pre-provision income, followed by branches in the US and Singapore, she said.
CHB on Monday opened a new branch in Japan and plans to set up new branches in Canada’s Toronto, Australia’s Sydney and in Southeast Asia, she added.
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
RSS