Creditor banks have agreed to extend a loan rollover to Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶) for another six months, a move that will further ease financial pressure on the nation’s largest memory chipmaker.
In a stock exchange filing yesterday, Powerchip said creditor banks led by Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀) agreed to extend the deadline of a syndicated loan to Dec. 30.
It was the second time this year that creditor banks agreed to roll over the more than NT$63 billion (US$1.9 billion) in loans.
In February, the banks granted the cash-strapped chipmaker a grace period until June 30 for payment of its loan principal. During the period, Powerchip only had to pay the monthly interest on the loan.
The new rollover came after the Hsinchu-based firm obtained US$125 million in fresh capital from US-based Kingston Technology Corp and Taiwan’s Powertech Technology Inc (力成) last week.
Late last month, the firm gained investor approval to reset the terms of its US$157.85 million overseas convertible bonds because it did not have enough money for a repayment.
Meanwhile, memory chipmaker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦) signed a three-year NT$3.7 billion syndicated loan agreement yesterday with nine local banks led by Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) and Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商銀), the company said in a statement.
The Taichung-based firm will use the new money to refund long-term loan payments and finance the general working capital of the company, Winbond said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the