Nanya's US$600m share sale okayed

Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), Taiwan's second-largest computer memory-chipmaker by market value, has approval from the Taiwan Securities Exchange Commission to sell about US$600 million in new shares overseas to help fund a new plant.

The company will set a price for the sale of 400 million new shares and 33 million shares held by company management a few days before the transaction is held in the second quarter, Nanya Vice President Charles Kau (高啟全) said in an interview. At current market prices, they would be worth US$637 million.

Nanya is reviving a plan scrapped last year because of low demand from investors. Taiwan companies in the computer business including Via Technologies Inc (威盛電子) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) were last year forced to scrap plans to sell new shares after PC sales declined for the first time since 1985.

Prospects for the stock sale improved as Nanya shares last week soared to a 12-month high of NT$51.5 (US$1.47) after prices of its main product more than tripled from less than US$1 per chip in early November, when Intel Corp said demand for Pentium4 computers was better than expected. It had canceled the share sale last year after its stock price fell below NT$15. Taiwan's largest supplier of double-data-rate memory chips, which speed operations in computers running Intel's Pentium4 processor, hired UBS Warburg to arrange the share sale, Kau said earlier.

The sale is the latest sign of increased demand for computer-related stocks in Taiwan. In January, Elitegroup Computer Systems Co (精英電腦), one of the island's largest makers of computer parts, said it appointed UBS to arrange a sale of US$120 million in bonds convertible into shares.