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Telco sales to fall: report

Sales by Taiwanese communications companies on a contract basis are expected to exceed NT$1.4 trillion (US$43.3 billion) next year, helped by new demand for global positioning system (GPS) devices and high-speed WiMAX telecom equipment, Taipei-based Market Intelligence Center's (MIC,資訊市場情報中心) latest forecast said yesterday.

Without counting telecom equipment orders, sales by local firms are expected to fall by NT$40 billion this year compared with last year, primarily because of contracting demand for handsets, MIC said, without giving figures.

But growing demand for smartphones, GPS devices, set-top boxes and telecom equipment for WiMAX and Internet services would be new driving factors next year, the forecast said.

Sanyang to complete IPO

Sanyang Industrial Co (三陽工業) will finish its HK$1.05 billion (US$135 million) initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong of its Vietnam motorcycle manufacturing unit by this Tuesday, the Taiwanese company said.

"The IPO will go on as scheduled," Tseng Chao-chiung, a spokesman for Hsinchu, Taiwan-based Sanyang said yesterday.

He denied a Dec. 3 report in the South China Morning Post, which said Vietnam Manufacturing & Export Processing (Holdings) Ltd had delayed its IPO.

Vietnam Manufacturing will start selling 226.92 million new shares at HK$3.61 to HK$4.64 each on Dec. 6, Sanyang said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Dec. 5. Vietnam Manufacturing has prepared an extra 34.04 million shares if the sale is oversubscribed, it said.

Power plant bidding heats up

Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) and Electric Power Development Co from Japan are among eight firms vying to build power plants in Taiwan, a government official said.

Kuo Kuang Power Co (國光電力), controlled by CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油), and a Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥) subsidiary also entered bids, Bureau of Energy Deputy Director-General Wang Yunn-ming (王運銘) said by telephone in Taipei yesterday.

The government and Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) will choose the successful bids by early March for permits to construct generators with a total installed capacity of 1,980 megawatts, he said.

"The competition is fierce," Wang said.

"About two or three" of the bidders will win contracts, he said.

The planned capacity of the bidders, including a Marubeni Corp venture, total 6,000 megawatts, Wang said. Marubeni is Japan's fifth-largest trading company.

Taiwan could suffer power shortages in five years unless additional generators are built, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in June last year.

Electricity sales at Taipower, the monopoly grid operator, increased an average 4.8 percent annually over the past five years, outpacing the 4.4 percent gain in Taiwan's installed capacity, according to the company's Web site.

Shin Kong to acquire shares

Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) will acquire 134 million MasterLink Securities Corp (元富證券) shares through a block trading on the stock exchange, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.

Shin Kong Financial said it had decided to purchase the MasterLink shares after its board agreed to the transfer of the equity holdings from its life insurance subsidiary, Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽).

With the addition of the newly acquired shares, which represents a 9.65-percent stake in the local brokerage, Shin Kong Financial will control a more than 25 percent stake in MasterLink.
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