ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), the nation’s third-largest computer memory chipmaker, yesterday said it had filed a consolidation plan jointly with Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc in hopes of receiving a government bailout.
The consolidation plan comes five weeks prior to the date of maturity in mid-February of US$330 million in ProMOS corporate bonds with embedded call options for investors.
“We filed an industrial consolidation proposal jointly with Elpida on Jan. 7. Both companies’ chairmen have their signed the proposal,” ProMOS spokesman Ben Tseng (曾邦助) said by telephone, confirming a report by the Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday.
The filing also marks the latest move by Elpida, the largest memory chipmaker in Japan, after the government rejected a bailout proposal filed with Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), Taiwan’s largest computer chipmaker, on Dec. 26.
“We hope the proposal will meet the government’s requirements,” Tseng said.
Tseng declined to reveal further information.
With a fresh cash injection, the government hopes Taiwanese chipmakers, notably manufacturers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), would be able to resolve a persistent problem — the inability to develop core technologies on their own. By forming closer ties with their overseas peers, Taiwanese DRAM makers could turn this downturn into an opportunity to gather strength and recover.
In an e-mail responding to the Taipei Times’ question about potential cooperation between Elpida and ProMOS, Elpida chief executive Yukio Sakamoto said: “I’m not in a position to reply to that kind of speculation.”
The Economic Daily News report, without citing sources, said that Elpida and ProMOS had proposed merging ProMOS and Taichung-based Rexchip Electronics Inc (瑞晶電子), a joint venture between Elpida and Powerchip. Elpida holds a 52 percent stake in the venture.
Asked by the Taipei Times on Wednesday whether the government aims to finalize its bailout plan before ProMOS collapses because of bond defaults next month, Industrial Development Bureau Director-General Chen Chao-yi (陳昭義) said: “We expect to clinch the matter by that time.”
Meanwhile, Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s No. 2 DRAM supplier, has said it is still in discussion with its US partner, Micron Technology Inc, on proposing a bailout plan.
Separately, Powerchip yesterday said that sales last month plunged nearly 70 percent to NT$1.31 billion from NT$4.33 billion a year earlier, citing continued price declines and output reduction.
But the chipmaker said in a statement that chip prices were on the rebound in the wake of industrywide output cuts, leading to expectations of an easing in oversupply amid falling inventories.
Shares of ProMOS fell 5.3 percent to NT$2.13 yesterday, slightly underperforming the benchmark TAIEX, which lost 5.3 percent.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS