Cash Box KTV (錢櫃), one of the nation's major KTV chains, bought a 30 percent stake in rival Holiday Entertainment Co (好樂迪娛樂事業) over the past two days.
Chinese media yesterday reported that earlier this week Holiday initiated a public auction to sell 58,811 shares, with Cash Box scooping up 46,000 shares at NT$26 a share.
Taiwan Securities Investment Company (
"The buyer is another Tai-wanese KTV chain operator," said Lu Shu-ling (呂叔玲), a section chief at Taiwan Securities.
Yesterday the auction continued and Cash Box acquired most of the remaining 12,501 shares at NT$26 a share, Chinese media reported.
Over the past two days, Holiday sold 58,811 shares, representing a 31.9 percent stake in the company, earning it NT$325 million.
The new shareholder is expected to bring new cooperation between the two.
"The nearly one-third ownership will allow Cash Box to gain several board seats and be involved in Holiday's operations," said Edward Jeng (
He added that the deal is a win-win strategy for both parties.
"With Taiwan's KTV market dominated by these two players, based on the new investment ties, competition will be reduced and profit margins will be more enjoyable," Jeng said.
He explained that in addition to the slow economy, severe competition between the two last summer ate away at both firms' bottom lines.
The competition has seen both KTV companies sign exclusive Karaoke deals with different record companies. Since customers can't find a wide variety of music in one place, they boycotted both, he said.
TAIEX-listed Holiday reported revenue of NT$3.49 billion last year, 7.82 percent down on the year before.
"Holiday spent a lot to invest in new business over past two years, while the return was not pleasant," Jeng said.
For instance, the company invested about NT$200 million in record company Alfa Music International Co (
So far the two have brought little in terms of return, he said.
Shares of Holiday rose NT$0.5 to close at NT$25.7 on the TAIEX yesterday.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li