Taiwan stocks closed flat on Tuesday as a warning from Goldman Sachs about oversupply in the display panel industry dragged down the shares of manufacturers like AU Optronics Corp.
The benchmark TAIEX share index finished up 0.03 percent at 6,350.52 points. Turnover fell to T$114.4 billion ($3.4 billion) from T$120.3 billion a day earlier.
"The report from Goldman Sachs triggered selling in LCD shares," said Sheng Yen, a fund manager at Franklin Templeton First Taiwan Securities Investment Trust.
"LCD stocks have risen quite a lot. Investors took this chance to cash out."
Goldman Sachs said in a report on Monday that it expected panel prices to fall in the first half of 2006, and maintained its 12-month target price for AU at T$35.70. That was a 22 percent drop to AU's current share price.
AU, the world's third-largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plummeted the 7 percent daily limit to T$45.60 and was the most actively traded stock by volume. AU is still up 26 percent since hitting a year low on October 19.
Smaller rival Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp fell 4.94 percent to T$38.45, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd fell 1.74 percent to T$8.45. Silicon Integrated Systems Inc ended down 0.78 percent, erasing earlier gains after the company denied a newspaper report that Intel Corp had waived its licensing fees. Bucking the 0.48 percent decline in the electronics sub-index, Largan Precision Co, which makes lens for camera phones, jumped 7 percent after it said November sales soared 175.9 from a year earlier to an all-time high.
Comments
Comments are closed.