Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), the nation’s No. 2 liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panel maker, said yesterday it hoped to close a three-way merger with panel makers Innolux Display Corp (群創光電) and TPO Displays Corp (統寶光電) in March, one month earlier than scheduled.
The share-swap merger came amid the LCD panel industry’s rapid recovery from last year’s slump as consumers resume spending on electronics because of the improving global economy, led mostly by Asian countries like China.
Chi Mei Optoelectronics chairman Frank Liao (廖錦祥) told shareholders that the merger would have a synergistic effect in terms of capacity, capital, customers and raw material suppliers. Liao said the three companies were complementary to each other in terms of flat-panel manufacturing technologies. Early integration would maximize the effect, he said.
The three companies said in November they planned to wrap up the merger on April 30 to expand operation scale and enhance competitiveness.
Innolux said at the time that it would issue 2.95 billion common shares to Chi Mei Optoelectronics and 528 million to TPO Displays. The resultant company will be named Chimei Innolux Corp.
Shareholders of Innolux and TPO yesterday gave their go-ahead to the plan, which will create the nation’s biggest LCD panel maker, unseating AU Optronics Corp (友達光電).
The companies yesterday also gave positive forecasts for the LCD industry. Innolux chairman Tuan Hsing-chien (段行建) said demand was better than he had expected last month and that inventory was healthy.
Ray Chen (陳瑞聰), chairman of TPO and president of the world’s No. 2 notebook computer contract maker Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), told reporters that no slack season was expected this year.
The positive outlook is reflected in plans to hike prices aggressively for PC monitor and TV panels in the first half of this month as demand looks stronger than expected, market researcher DisplaySearch said in a report released on Tuesday.
“TV brands are continuing to stock more panels for the sales planned for the next one to two months, especially since the demand from China TV brands remains firm in January, which shifts power to the panel sell-side,” DisplaySearch said in the report.
The price for mainstay 19-inch PC monitor panels rose 2.7 percent, or US$2, to US$77 per unit for the first two weeks of this month from the previous two weeks, the report showed. Prices for 32-inch TV panels may climb nearly 1 percent to US$205 per unit, it 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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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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