ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), the nation’s third-largest maker of memory chips used in PCs, said yesterday that South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor Inc would stand firm on buying a stake in ProMOS, despite the recent stock market turmoil.
The Hsinchu-based chipmaker’s remarks were part of efforts to counter rumors — including news in the Chinese-language Commercial Times on Saturday that some ProMOS employees had been told to take vacation because of low factory usage at an advanced plant — that have led to a sharp decline in the value of the company’s shares.
ProMOS shares have plunged by more than 14 percent to close at NT$5.03 on Friday since the beginning of this month, against an 8 percent drop in the TAIEX during the same period.
ProMOS’s closing price on Friday was about 36 percent lower than the NT$7.96 per share Hynix intended to pay. Last month, Hynix said it would buy 640 million shares, or about 10 percent, of ProMOS shares to boost production without building a new plant, while ProMOS would be in a position to make memory chips using Hynix’s advanced technology.
“Although the global financial market is not doing well, the company’s technological partner, Hynix, has not changed its position on buying ProMOS shares,” ProMOS said in a statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
The deal would make Hynix the second-largest shareholder of ProMOS after local chipmaker Mosel Vitelic Inc (茂矽).
ProMOS said that with support from Hynix at a 12-inch plant in Taichung, it was on track to upgrade to 50 nanometer technology. The plant manufactures dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips on 70-nanometer technology.
“The factory is full and operations are normal,” ProMOS said.
ProMOS suspected that selloff by vulture funds may have been behind the unusual decline in its share prices, the company said in its filing yesterday.
Because of a record-high debt to equity ratio, Morgan Stanley downgraded Taiwanese DRAM makers to “cautious” from “attractive,” a report dated last Tuesday said.
Liabilities to equity ratio rose to 163 percent for Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s second-biggest DRAM maker, and 145 percent for both ProMOS and Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s top DRAM supplier, the report said.
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