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.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”