Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), the nation's largest diversified industrial company, plans to merge four US units and sell shares in the combined entity, said Lee Chih-tsuen (李志村), president of Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), the group's flagship.
Formosa Plastics Group hopes to sell shares in the new company in the US next year, Lee told reporters after Formosa Plastics Corp's annual shareholders meeting in Taipei yesterday.
"There are a lot of opportunities in the US capital markets and we aren't using them at the moment," Lee said. "We're combining the units because the US market likes large-scale companies."
The proposed share sale would help the company raise funds as it seeks government approval to invest as much as US$5 billion in a chemical plant in China. Taiwan is developing a surplus of chemical production, prompting Formosa Plastics to pursue growth abroad.
"The listing would help them become more flexible in using funds," said Julian Chen, who manages the equivalent of US$15 million for Invesco Taiwan Ltd (景順投信), including shares of Formosa Plastics Corp. "Funds raised in the US would help them expand in the petrochemical industry."
The four companies, two units of Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑石化) and two of Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), produce petrochemical and plastic products including polyvinyl chloride and plastic pipes, according to the group's Web site. The group also owns natural gas wells in the US.
Details of the share sale, such as how much would be raised, had not been decided on, Lee said.
The Formosa Plastics Group is expanding in China, partly to take advantage of increasing demand there, Lee told shareholders.
Formosa Plastics Corp expects annual sales from products it makes in China to reach NT$39 billion (US$1.24 billion) after construction of three chemical plants is completed around the end of 2007, he said.
Lee repeated his view that the government should ease restrictions on investing in petrochemical plants in China to allow Taiwanese companies to take advantage of demand for raw materials.
Formosa Plastics Group is considering building a petrochemical project in China similar to its NT$652.8 billion venture in the west coast township of Mailiao in Yunlin County, which includes Taiwan's first privately owned oil refinery and naphtha crackers.
The government restricts investment in China because of concerns that companies there may lure business away from Taiwan or steal technology. The restrictions include a ban on building plants that produce ethylene, a raw material used to make plastics and textiles.
Formosa Plastics Corp shareholders yesterday approved proposals to invest NT$1.97 billion in expanding carbon fiber and nitrogen trifluoride production in Taiwan.
Formosa Plastics' annual capacity to produce carbon fiber, used for insulation, is expected to rise to 2,950 tonnes by December next year from 1,850 now, according to a report the company distributed to shareholders yesterday.
The company plans to double its annual capacity to produce nitrogen trifluoride -- a gas used in the manufacture of semiconductors and liquid-crystal displays -- to 400 tonnes by end of the year, according to the report.
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
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
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],”
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