Foreign ownership accounts for 42.5% of Taiwan’s market as of the end of October, according to a statement from the TWSE. The total value of foreign shareholding is NT$13.64trn ($455bn), but officials want to do better than that.
To drum up interest, JP Morgan and the TWSE recently held a “Taiwan Corporate Day” during the bank’s global technology, media and telecom conference in Asia conference in Hong Kong.
The purpose was to highlight Taiwan’s listed technology companies, while enabling lesser-known Taiwanese companies to have greater market exposure, officials said.
Listed technology companies in Taiwan have outperformed the broader domestic market. Year-to-date, the FTSE Taiwan Technology Index returned 39.94%, while the broader Taiwan market returned 29.42%, according to FE data.
The situation in Taiwan mirrors what is happening globally as the tech sector outperforms the broader market by a large margin. Franklin Templeton’s Mark Mobius previously said he is particularly bullish on the technology sector in emerging markets.
“The strong performance of the stock market also indicates the excellent overall operating results of Taiwanese listed companies, which are favoured by investors both at home and abroad,” the TWSE said in a statement.
However, Hong Kong’s market has outperformed Taiwan and is up 39% year-to-date, FE data shows.
Taiwan exposure
Semiconductor maker TSMC is one of the most widely-held Taiwan tech stocks across asset classes. Out of the 269 SFC-authorised funds across emerging markets, Greater China and Asia-Pacific equity categories, 86 have more than 3% allocated to TSMC, according to FE data.
Although more than half of the funds (178) out of the 269 mentioned above have more than a 3% exposure to the broader universe of Taiwan equities, Taiwan country funds are rare.
There are only five SFC-registered actively-managed Taiwan-focused equity funds, with combined assets of just $624m as of the end of October, according to FE data.
The biggest fund is the Schroder ISF Taiwanese Fund, which has $275m in assets.
In terms of performance, the Manulife Taiwan Equity fund performed the best both in an annualised three-year and year-to-date basis.
| Fund |
AUM ($m) |
Three-year performance |
Year-to-date performance |
Three-year alpha |
| Manulife Taiwan Equity |
32.9 |
15.14 |
43.11 |
8.6 |
| JPM Taiwan |
172.7 |
11.39 |
30.79 |
5.08 |
| Schroder ISF Taiwanese Equity |
275.9 |
11.28 |
25.04 |
4.66 |
| Value Partners Taiwan |
65 |
10.18 |
26.99 |
4.73 |
| Fidelity Taiwan |
78 |
9.33 |
26.44 |
2.45 |
Source: FE Analytics
All five funds have huge exposure to the telecom, media and technology sector, with the exception of the JP Morgan fund, which has only 25% of its assets in the sector.
| Fund |
Exposure to TMT (%) |
| Manulife Taiwan Equity |
60.64 |
| JPM Taiwan |
25.1 |
| Schroder ISF Taiwanese Equity |
59.98 |
| Value Partners Taiwan |
63 |
| Fidelity Taiwan |
49.9 |
Source: FE Analytics
