Re Taiwan: The Taiwanese are not spending wildly at this point for the very reason that they are not in the same kind of trouble as the Koreans, that is, they have more mature financial controls, such as equity requirements for debt creation. One could also argue that they have superior financial management.
I have, however, heard several stories about the Taiwanese expanding and, if possible, even buying distressed businesses outright. I'll keep an eye out for them in the future and post them if I see them.
One company I like today is Orbotech, which is going to have some good flat-panel display test sales to Taiwan. As I understand it, final testing for monitors is often, basically, a Chinese woman with a fancy magnifying glass. The FPD technology is about to make manual inspection unworkable, even at Taiwanese wages, and the FPD growth rate looks promising to me. So I'm picking up some ORBKF at today's prices, i.e. 33 1/2. This is a small company but a flat-out bargain at this price, even with no growth in the next couple of quarters, as both trailing and forward-looking PEs are in the 12 range and they have a credible story for excellent growth.
As for Taiwan, I think we may be looking at the next Hong Kong, especially if their chip industry outperforms Japan's this quarter. |
