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.
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
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day