Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation’s No. 3 maker of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels, yesterday said shareholders gave the go-ahead to raise NT$21 billion (US$650 million) via a private placement next year.
Shareholders approved the plan to issue bonds or 6 billion shares at up to NT$3.25 per share, the company said after a special shareholder’s meeting.
The company hopes to better its financial structure and fund operations and equipment purchases.
Shareholders also approved a board reshuffle, electing Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) as one of three new board members after Compal bought a 20 percent stake in the company via a private placement.
Chunghwa Picture chairman Lin Wei-shan (林蔚山) said the partnership with Compal would double or triple the company’s notebook panel shipments next year.
Chunghwa Picture said it had no plans to merge with any company, dismissing speculation that it was the acquisition target of Compal and rival AU Optronics Corp (友達光電).
Compal subscribed 2.8 billion common shares for NT$7 billion earlier this year, during which the panel maker raised NT$10 billion by selling 4 billion new common shares at NT$2.5 a share. Chunghwa Picture’s parent company Tatung Co (大同) subscribed the remaining 1.2 billion shares via subsidiaries.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts