Formosa Petrochemical Corp (
Formosa Petrochemical will offer 179.5 million existing shares, or a 2.3 percent stake, for NT$43 each starting Monday and ending Thursday, according to a Securities and Futures Commission statement. Three-quarters of the shares will be offered to individual investors.
Capital Securities Corp (
Regulations prevent companies from offering new stock in initial public offerings. The stock will begin trading in Taipei on Dec. 26.
Formosa Petrochemical predicts its profit will rise to NT$18.6 billion next year from a projected NT$17.9 billion this year, according to Taiwan Stock Exchange statements. Sales may rise to NT$241.4 billion next year from NT$223.4 billion this year.
Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), the flagship of Formosa Plastics Group, owns a third of Formosa Petrochemical. The group is the nation's biggest industrial conglomerate and is reportedly planning to build a NT$1.26 trillion (US$36.84 billion) industrial complex in Taoyuan County, local press reported yesterday, without saying where the information was obtained.
Development of the 3,510 hectare complex, probably the nation's biggest ever private sector investment project, was expected to generate NT$745 billion in annual output and at least 11,800 job opportunities, a Taoyuan County Government official said.
The Formosa group originally planned to build a new seaport in Taoyuan County for NT$57.1 billion, but decided to expand the investment to include a steel mill, a coal-fired power plant and an industrial park in the latest proposal.
The Taoyuan port would have 33 berths with cargo capacity reaching 102 million tonnes by 2021, making it the second-biggest port in the country, the official said.
The proposed steel mill would have an annual output of 10 million tonnes and the power plant would generate 4.8 million kilowatts a year.
The proposal required further evaluation by county and central governments, the official said.
Formosa group officials were not immediately available for comment.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to