Precision Silicon Group (嘉晶電子), a major supplier of silicon epitaxial used in semiconductor chips and solar cells, saw its share price plunge by the daily limit yesterday over an insider trading probe.
Its shares dropped 6.92 percent to close at NT$80.7 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The company's shares rose by the daily limit on Thursday after the company reported last month's sales reached NT$60 million (US$1.84 million), an increase of 14.6 percent month-on-month.
Compared with a year earlier, sales dropped by 23.61 percent.
News reports yesterday said that the Taipei Bureau of Investigation was probing the drop in Precision Silicon's shares from NT$38 in March 2005 to NT$16 a short time later after its parent company, Carnival Industrial Corp (嘉裕), sold more than 6 million shares. The bureau wants to know if Carnival Industrial's share sale was linked to a worse-than-expected half-year financial report which some insiders might have access to in advance.
Precision posted after-tax earnings of NT$8.77 million, or NT$0.15 per share, for the first half of 2005.
Last week, investigators talked with Precision chairman Raymond Yang (楊炳連), president Joseph Lee (李玉山), chief financial officer Chen Chun-hung (陳俊宏) and others about the 2005 share sale.
Precision denied any wrongdoing in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, saying: "Operations were not affected by the shareholders' share sale."
It said that any share sale or transfer by company officials had been reported to stock regulators and was therefore legal.
Precision's shares hit a high of NT$164.5 on July 26 this year. The stock has risen by 79.54 percent since the beginning of the year.
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