Taiwanese manufacturers last month shed a bit of confidence regarding business prospects for the next six months as nontech firms face sharp competition from rivals abroad and despite tech companies continuing to benefit from an artificial intelligence boom, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) said yesterday.
The confidence gauge for local manufacturers lost 0.06 points to 99.1, resulting in a neutral reading, it said.
The nation’s exports fared stronger than a year earlier, driven by the rapid increase in shipments of information communication technology products, TIER economist Gordon Sun (孫明德) said, adding that private consumption held resilient.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
“Data showed that the economic recovery is continuing despite volatile TAIEX showings,” Sun said.
The number of firms with rosy views about their business outlook fell from 37.4 percent to 26.7 percent, while firms with negative expectations grew from 18.2 percent to 21.1 percent, TIER’s monthly report showed.
Base metal product vendors are generally looking at a business downturn in the next six month, mainly due to price competition from peers in China as they digest their supply surpluses, Sun said.
Makers of chemical products and machinery equipment have neutral views, with end-market demand recovering at a slow pace, he said.
Machinery equipment and auto part suppliers have to deal with price pressure from the steep depreciation of the yen, which makes Japanese peers more competitive, Sun said.
By contrast, tech firms are more optimistic, thanks to the arrival of the high sales season for technology products, he said.
The business sentiment among local service providers was 99.09, up 0.01 points from one month earlier, but too small to qualify as an uptick, the institute said.
TIER attributed the flat results to the advent of major sales seasons, anniversary promotions for department stores and e-commerce operators, and more national holidays in the second half of the year.
On the other hand, hospitality operators in Kaohsiung and Hualien have taken serious hits from earthquakes and Typhoon Gaemi, the institute said.
The confidence measure among construction firms and real-estate brokers slid 1.03 points to 111.96, as domestic banks turned cautious about mortgage operations, TIER research fellow Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said.
The cautious approach came before the central bank earlier this month asked them to come up with quantitative control measures to slow real-estate lending by Friday next week.
The monetary policymaker is likely to tighten lending terms further to cool the housing market next month, if house loans continue to run wild, Liu said.
House loans last month expanded by 10.82 percent year-on-year to a record high of NT$10.66 trillion (US$335.04 billion), central bank data released yesterday showed.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
RSS