HannStar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶), Taiwan's fourth-largest maker of flat-panel displays, is selling US$282 million of shares overseas to invest in new equipment and keep up with rising demand, said a banker involved in the sale.
The company is today marketing 700 million shares in the form of global depositary receipts to investors in Hong Kong and Singapore before heading to Europe and the US, said the banker who declined to be identified. It plans to sell the shares by next Wednesday at a discount of as much as 8 percent.
HannStar and local rivals such as Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) are investing in new factories to keep up with South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co and LG Philips LCD Co, the world's biggest makers of flat-panel displays. Samsung last month predicted liquid crystal display sales will increase 40 percent this year as demand beats supply.
USB AG is managing the sale, helped by Fubon Securities Co (
Screen-makers have increased spending on plants as they vie for leadership of an LCD-TV market that's forecast to grow to US$19.7 billion by 2007, researcher DisplaySearch said last month.
Samsung said in September it will spend 452.7 billion won (US$386 million) to increase LCD production as more people order LCD screens, which are rapidly replacing bulky glass-tube based monitors and TVs on desktops and in living rooms.
Sharp Corp said Thursday it will double production capacity at a new plant, aiming to regain the top spot as the world's largest maker of liquid-crystal displays for televisions from LG Philips LCD Co.
Sharp will open a second production line at its factory in Kameyama in the western prefecture of Mie in August, Sharp President Katsuhiko Machida told reporters at the company's headquarters in Osaka, western Japan.
Sharp expects LCD sales to rise 40 percent to ?730 billion in the year ending March 2005 and aims to double sales of LCD television panels to 3 million units, Machida said.
Sharp will invest ?220 billion (US$2 billion) in capital spending for the year starting April, Machida said.
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