Asian Stocks Advance, Led by Sony on Yen Drop; Posco Climbs

Asian stocks rose, headed for a weekly gain. Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. climbed as a weaker yen boosted the value of their overseas sales.

``The falling yen will be one of the biggest supports for today's market,'' said Soichiro Monji, who helps oversee about $47 billion at Daiwa SB Investments Ltd. in Tokyo.

Advantest Corp. led an advance by chip-related shares after Morgan Stanley raised its rating on Applied Materials Inc., the world's biggest maker of semiconductor-production equipment. Posco rose after Nippon Steel Corp. said it bought a 5 percent stake in the South Korean steelmaker.

The Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific Index added 0.5 percent to 143.14 at 12:06 p.m. in Tokyo. The index is set for a 0.3 percent increase this week, recovering from a sell-off in global equities that drove the measure down 3.5 percent in the previous five days.

Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose 0.3 percent, while the broader Topix index climbed 0.4 percent. Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. added to gains after a government report showed machinery orders rebounded in January, signaling that capital spending will keep fueling economic growth.

Markets open for trading elsewhere in the region advanced, except in Hong Kong, China and South Korea. Gauges in Taiwan and Indonesia were little changed.

U.S. shares rose yesterday, buoyed by the prospect of increasing sales and earnings at telephone companies, raw- materials producers and luxury retailers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.6 percent to the highest this month.

Yen Weakness
Sony, the world's largest maker of video-game consoles, climbed 2.7 percent to 6,150 yen. A Nikkei newspaper report saying the company will reduce production costs for its PlayStation 3 by using cheaper chips also helped drive the shares higher.

Toyota, Japan's No. 1 automaker by sales, added 0.4 percent to 7,870 yen. It generated more than a third of its fiscal 2006 revenue in North America.

The yen recently traded at 117.24 against the dollar, from 116.62 when the stock market closed yesterday. It traded at 154.02 per euro after falling 0.9 percent yesterday to 153.58.

A stronger dollar and euro mean Japanese exporters get more for their overseas sales when they are converted back to yen while their products become more competitive.

Canon, the world's largest digital camera maker, jumped 2.3 percent to 6,300 yen. The company, which last year made 75 percent of its sales outside Japan, said yesterday after the market closed it will buy back up to 17 million shares from today to April 9.
Rating Change

Morgan Stanley raised its rating on Applied Materials and KLA-Tencor Corp., the two largest producers of semiconductor- production equipment in the U.S., to ``overweight'' from ``equal weight,'' saying their shares may gain 20 percent in the next 12 to 18 months on accelerating earnings growth.

The stocks ``will soon reflect a bottoming of manufacturing utilizations'' in the first half of 2007, increased capital equipment orders in the second half of this year and ``robust'' capital spending growth in 2008, analyst Harlan Sur wrote in a note to investors.

Shares also gained after National Semiconductor Corp., a maker of chips that manage power in electronic devices, reported fiscal third-quarter profit of 22 cent a shares, beating the 20 cent-estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

Advantest, the world's biggest maker of memory-chip testers, jumped 2.5 percent to 5,380 yen. Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of computer-memory chips, added 1.7 percent to 584,000 won, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the No. 1 supplier of customized chips, rose 0.2 percent to NT$66.