Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's largest phone operator, said it plans to sell 625.4 million shares to overseas and local investors this week.
The shares are equivalent to a 6.46 percent stake valued at NT$34 billion (US$1 billion) based on the current stock price. Chunghwa Telecom is holding roadshows in Europe, the US and Asia until Friday, it said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on yesterday, without giving more details.
The share sale will help the government, which owns 41 percent of Chunghwa Telecom, raise funds to cover debt. Chunghwa Telecom said on Sept. 17 that it selected Goldman Sachs Group Inc, UBS AG and Morgan Stanley to arrange an American depositary receipt (ADR) sale, after the company's board on June 20 approved the sale on behalf of the government.
Of the total, 505.4 million shares will be sold to overseas investors, and the remaining 120 million locally through an auction, the Ministry of Finance said on its Web site last Thursday.
The auction will be held on Thursday, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said in a statement on its Web site last Friday.
Shares of Chunghwa Telecom fell 0.2 percent to close at NT$54.8 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The stock has dropped 8.5 percent since the government first sold shares in the company on Aug. 9 last year.
The nation's TAIEX index gained 8.1 percent in the same period.
The government privatized Chunghwa Telecom by selling a 14 percent stake in the form of ADRs at a 0.5 percent discount to the price at that time, and about 3 percent in local shares.
The shares in the domestic auction this week are expected to be sold at a smaller discount than the 7.7 percent figure from the sale last year, the Chinese-language Commercial Times newspaper reported last Saturday, citing Vice Finance Minister Liu Teng-cheng (
Chunghwa Telecom said last month it plans to sell an 8 percent stake owned by the government and shareholder Taiwan Mobile Co (
The sale would be of a 7.4 percent stake owned by the government and 0.6 percent held by Taiwan Mobile.
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],”