Day: July 1, 2022

Costco Wholesale Corp. has purchased the remaining 45 percent stake it did not own in its Taiwan joint venture for US$1.05 billion, and is now the sole owner of the Costco warehouse club in the country, the company said Thursday.

In a statement, the American multinational corporation said the completion of the Costco-Taiwan acquisition made it the only wholly-owned foreign retailer in Taiwan.

The joint venture was a partnership between Costco Wholesale Corp. and local partner President Group, and opened Taiwan's first membership warehouse outlet in Kaohsiung in 1997.

Meanwhile, Costco Wholesale Corp. assured its members that there would be no changes to Costco-Taiwan operations.

According to Costco, the deal is expected to add to the company's earnings per share by 1 percent to 1.5 percent.

The membership-only retailer currently operates 833 warehouses globally, including 14 in Taiwan.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

A pair of red-crowned cranes at the Taipei Zoo have finally hatched an egg successfully 11 years after arriving in Taiwan, the zoo announced on Friday.

The cranes came from the Kushiro Zoo in Hokkaido, Japan back in 2011 as a part of a collaborative agreement with the Japanese zoo to preserve the crane species in parts of the world outside of Japan, the Taipei Zoo said in a statement.

It said that after getting used to their habitat in Taiwan, Kika and Big were paired to begin breeding in 2014, with the female Kika often seen performing the species' unique mating dance during mating season.

In return, the male Big would sometimes respond to Kika's call, with the pair's first batch of eggs being laid in 2015.

The zoo said caretakers and experts would often help the process along by altering the pair's meal plans, increasing the size of their habitat, and even artificially inseminating Kika's eggs.

Unfortunately, all of these eggs never came to term, until the successful birth of a hatchling this year.

The zoo added that the chick came from two eggs laid by Kika and that it was hatched naturally through the mutual care and efforts of both parents.

Following its birth, the chick would follow its mother around to seek food and get fed while Big would shoulder the responsibility of protecting them.

The Kuchiro Zoo also joined in to celebrate the successful hatching of the chick by providing the Taipei Zoo with knowledge and suggestions on caring for crane chicks.

The Taipei Zoo described Kika, now 17, and Big, now 20, as responsible first-time parents.

During the nursing period of the chick, staff at the zoo have to be very careful when caring for the crane family, it said, adding that Kika might hide her chick while Big would keep his eyes on caretakers of their habitat and attempt to chase away those he sees as invaders.

While the chick is growing healthily at a rapid rate, the zoo nonetheless warned that with the chick in its fragile infancy, visitors should only try to catch a glimpse of the newborn through telescopes installed in the zoo's Amphibian and Reptile House.

The Taipei Zoo said while Kika and Big's parenthood was a long-awaited celebration, it was not the first time that red-crowned cranes were hatched at the zoo.

With the zoo first founded in 1913 as the Maruyama Zoo during Taiwan's Japanese colonial period, the zoo has had experience housing the crane species.

The zoo said the first two cranes hatched in the zoo was in 1918, with successful hatches documented sporadically throughout the zoo's history.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Shares in Taiwan moved sharply lower, falling by more than 480 points Friday as investors took cues from a plunge by tech stocks on the United States markets overnight in the wake of the latest unfavorable data pointing to high inflationary pressure, dealers said.

Contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the most heavily weighted stock on the local market, fell by more than 4.7 percent, pushing down the bellwether electronics sector as well as the broader market, as investors remained haunted by an aggressive Federal Reserve after the June consumption expenditures price data, they said.

The Taiex, the weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE), ended down by 482.65 points, or 3.26 percent, at 14,343.08 after moving between 14,336.03 and 14,812.13. Turnover totaled NT$300.1 billion (US$10.07 billion).

The market opened down by 13.60 points and moved in a narrow range in the early morning session before selling escalated after 10 a.m., focusing on large-cap semiconductor stocks, in particular TSMC, and spreading to non-tech stocks across the board to push the Taiex below the 14,400-point mark, dealers said.

Dealers said the sell-off largely reflected the weakness on the U.S. markets, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.82 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index fell by 1.33 percent overnight.

The drops came after the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that the core PCE price index, the Fed's preferred inflation measure, rose by 4.7 percent in May, which was 0.2 percentage points less than that in April but still hovered around levels last seen in the 1980s.

"The latest PCE price index shocked the markets, prompting many investors to think the Fed will act aggressively in the next policy-making meeting scheduled for late July," Hua Nan Securities analyst Kevin Su said.

"The market has widely anticipated the Fed will raise its key interest rates by an additional 75 basis points after a 0.75-percentage point hike in June," Su said.

The Fed kicked off a rate-hike cycle in March by raising interest rates by 25 basis points to tackle inflation, and again in May by 50 basis points.

"With interest rates on the rise, large-cap tech stocks, in particular in the semiconductor industry, have lost their luster as their dividend yields were shy of growing bond yields," Su said. "Again, TSMC came under heavy pressure, leading other tech stocks to trend lower throughout the session."

TSMC fell by 4.73 percent to close at NT$453.50. The stock's losses contributed 187 points to the Taiex's decline and were a major factor in the electronics sector and the semiconductor sub-index falling by 4.07 percent and 4.85 percent, respectively.

"In addition to fears over rising interest rates, the global semiconductor industry got hit by concerns over growing inventories as the consumer electronics market showed signs of slowing down on rising inflation," Su said.

Among other large-cap semiconductor stocks, United Microelectronics Corp., a smaller contract chipmaker, fell by 2.81 percent to end at NT$38.05, while smartphone IC designer MediaTek Inc. plunged by 5.99 percent to close at NT$612.00 on falling smartphone demand.

In addition, dynamic random access memory chipmaker Winbond Electronics Corp. plunged by 7.60 percent to end at NT$20.05 after its American counterpart Micron Technology Inc. on Thursday cut its sales guidance for the current quarter.

Also in the tech sector, iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. fell by 2.75 percent to close at NT$106.00, while power management solution provider Delta Electronics Inc. appeared resilient, ending unchanged at NT$221.50 as the company has entered the automotive electronics business.

While the main board took a beating, investors rushed to park their money in telecom stocks with Chunghwa Telecom Co. rising by 1.64 percent to close at NT$124.00, and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co. increasing by 2.27 percent to end at NT$85.50.

"The transportation sector remained in the doldrums as there are growing fears that freight rates will fall in the second half of this year as the U.S. government aims to curb shipping costs to rein in inflation," Su said.

In the transportation sector, which fell by 5.53 percent, Evergreen Marine Corp., the largest container cargo shipper in Taiwan, fell by 5.67 percent to close at NT$79.80. Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp. and Wan Hai Lines Ltd. dropped by 5.47 percent and 6.72 percent, respectively, to end at NT$77.80 and NT$111.00.

Elsewhere in the old economy sector, many stocks were affected by worries over weaker demand in an economic slowdown. Among them, Chung Hwa Pulp Corp. plunged by 8.06 percent to close at NT$17.10, and Cheng Loong Corp. fell by 3.26 percent to end at NT$25.20.

"Looking at today's expanded turnover, I think many institutional investors scrambled to cut holdings and stop their losses in a panic," Su said. "As long as a hawkish Fed continues to weigh on the market, there are no signs that the Taiex will soon find its technical support with TSMC likely to fall further."

According to the TWSE, foreign institutional investors sold a net NT$11.86 billion worth of shares on the main board Friday.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

CPC Corp., Taiwan announced Friday that the price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sold in cylinders for domestic use will remain unchanged in July, despite a drop in the LPG price on the international market.

The price of LPG cylinders for residential users, and propane, butane and mixed propane for industrial use, as well as LPG for the use of vehicles will all remain the same from July 2 to Aug. 1, the state-run fuel supplier said.

According to the company's price calculation formula, the recent drop in the price of LPG on the international market should lead to a reduction of NT$1 (US$0.034) per kilogram in the domestic LPG price, CPC said.

However, the decision not to lower prices accordingly was made to offset part of the losses accrued over the past few years as a result of fulfilling the government-imposed obligation to ease the financial burden on consumers, the company said.

The company said it has absorbed part of LPG price hikes since October 2019 to avoid raising prices for local consumers, amounting to NT$19.7 per kilogram.

CPC said it will adopt the same approach as it looks to claw back some of the remaining NT$18.7 per kilogram if the international price falls further.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel