Demand for information about Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain is increasing in the age of GenAI. A recent study investigated whether announcements of investor conferences by Taiwan’s semiconductor design firms positively influence the stock prices of the announcing companies and their industry peers across the entire semiconductor supply chain. 

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• Information disclosure in Taiwan: In contrast to the US, where it is common practice for nearly all publicly listed firms to hold quarterly earnings calls, Taiwanese publicly listed firms are mandated to hold or join an investor conference at least once a year. Such events typically include executive presentations and a shorter Q&A session compared to US earnings calls. Taiwanese listed firms tend to have greater control over the timing and content of investor conferences. As a result, investors perceive the announcements of such events as strategically important.
• Impact of conference announcements: The authors chose to study whether such announcements of these conferences affect the stock prices of Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain companies (TSSC).
• The authors separate the TSSC companies into three sub-groups: integrated circuit (IC) design by upstream firms, IC fabrication by midstream firms, and IC packaging and testing by downstream firms to examine the information spill-over effects further.

After narrowing down the scope of this research, the authors attempt to test three hypotheses:

• The announcement of an investor conference by Taiwan’s IC design firms causes a positive market reaction.
• IC design firms’ announcements of investor conferences illustrate a positive information transfer to midstream and downstream firms in the supply chain.

An upstream firm’s announcement of holding an investor conference causes a more robust info transfer to midstream firms than downstream firms in the supply chain.