Hynix Semiconductor Inc, the world’s third-largest maker of memory chips used in electronics, plans to buy a 2 percent stake in Taiwan’s Phison Electronics Co (群聯電子) for NT$346.5 million (US$11 million) and jointly develop storage device chips.
Hynix will buy 2.1 million shares through a private placement at NT$165 each, a 30 percent discount to the stock’s five-day average prior to yesterday’s close, Hsinchu-based Phison said in a statement on Monday. Hynix plans to sign a final agreement within the first half of the year, the South Korea-based company said in a separate statement yesterday.
Phison, which designs controller chips used in storage devices such as hard drives and memory cards, is expanding its range of products to semiconductors used in phones and navigation devices. The Hynix deal will secure the company’s supply of so-called NAND flash chips, used to save data in electronics devices, Phison spokesman Antonio Yu (于志強) said by telephone yesterday.
“We view such an alliance as very positive for Phison,” Robert Chen and Joey Cheng, Taipei-based analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, wrote in a report.
They raised their share price estimate 40 percent to NT$280 and maintained a “neutral” rating saying Hynix’s move “indicates Phison’s competitive business model and superior industry position.”
Hynix will be the second-largest shareholder in Phison behind Toshiba Corp, Yu said. Toshiba holds 17 percent of Phison’s shares, while Kingston Technology Co, with 1.1 percent, is the third largest shareholder, Yu said.
IN GOOD FAITH: Lai said he appreciates Micron’s commitment to Taiwan and that it would continue expanding its investment in the country, while also working with labor President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday called for US memory maker Micron Technology Inc and its workers to negotiate “sincerely” ahead of a possible strike by the company’s union in Taiwan. Last week, a Taiwanese union representing workers at Micron said it had secured authorization from its members to strike over a dispute concerning the company’s bonus scheme, escalating a labor conflict at the chipmaker’s largest manufacturing hub. Micron employs about 15,000 people in Taiwan and has said it invested more than NT$1.6 trillion (US$49.6 billion) in the country. Speaking in Taichung at the opening of a new Micron advanced assembly and testing facility,
China proposed adding advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to its export-control list, potentially restricting overseas transfers of AI models and chip designs in an effort to keep closer control over homegrown advancements in a strategically important sector. The draft proposal covers 23 AI technologies, including large language models, agents, chip designs and computing clusters. Restricted technologies would include model weights and source code for products exceeding certain performance thresholds. Chinese AI startups have this summer made significant progress in closing the gap on US industry leaders. Models such as Moonshot (月之暗面) AI’s Kimi K3 and DeepSeek’s (深度求索) latest editions offer better pricing,
CoreWeave Inc has become caught in a tug of war between investors who see rising bond yields as a potential rally killer for the artificial intelligence (AI) trade and those who think demand for computing power will make those concerns seem passe before long. The cloud-computing services provider’s shares plunged 20 percent in the first three sessions of last week, including more than 15 percent on Wednesday, as its debt tumbled to levels that typically indicate distress. On Thursday morning, the cost of protecting CoreWeave bonds against default rose to the highest intraday level on record, while swaps priced in a
Taiwan should not rule out any energy source or abandon environmental sustainability in favor of ideology and short-term benefits, President William Lai (賴清德) said in an interview, calling for a “professional assessment” of whether nuclear power should be reintroduced into Taiwan’s energy mix. In an online interview with influencer Yu Ting-hao (游庭皓) that aired yesterday, Lai reiterated his position on nuclear power. SHIFT Lai’s remarks marked a shift from the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP’s) longstanding opposition to nuclear power. As premier from 2017 to 2019, Lai pushed for more gas-fired power capacity while sticking to the DPP’s nuclear free homeland ideology and rejected the
RSS