Shares in Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶) rose to nearly the 7 percent daily trading limit yesterday after the stock resumed trading on the local bourse following the completion of a 38 percent capital reduction to NT$56.09 billion (US$1.76 billion) from NT$90.47 billion.
As a result of the capital reduction, Powerchip’s capital shares fell to 5.61 billion and its net value improved to NT$7.06 per share, exceeding the required NT$5 a share in net value for investors to trade Powerchip shares on margins.
At the end of the first quarter this year, Powerchip’s net value reached NT$3.65 a share.
In other words, investors can once again trade Powership Technology shares by borrowing from brokers while using the stock as collateral. The margin trading ban has been in place for the past year.
Powerchip shares jumped by 6.98 percent to NT$8.28 yesterday on the GRETAI Securities Market, after being suspended from trading between Aug. 28 and Sept. 13 in preparation for restarting trading at a new price of NT$7.74 per share.
Company chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) reiterated that Powerchip would post a fourth straight quarterly profit this quarter on expectations that the price of PC memory chips, or DRAM, would fall at a measured pace. Huang made the comments in an interview with the Chinese-language Economic Daily News on Monday.
Powerchip made a net profit of NT$10.3 billion, or NT$1.88 per share, in the first half of this year.
In a downward spiral since last quarter, the price of benchmark DDR2 and DDR3 DRAM fell 0.83 percent and 3.96 percent to US$1.92 per unit and US$2.14 per unit, respectively, from the previous trading session, according to Taipei-based research firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技).
Huang also stressed that the company’s priority was no longer capacity expansion, which has been a main cause of oversupply-driven downturns.
To minimize the volatility of the DRAM business, Powerchip plans to expand further into non-PC memory chips by allocating 40 percent of the company’s overall capacity to contract chip manufacturing and flash memory businesses, he said.
On July 6, Huang told a media briefing that non-PC memory made up 30 percent of its total capacity at that time.
Powerchip said it is supplying driver ICs used in LCD panels and Huang said during July’s media briefing that the firm is supplying driver ICs for Apple Inc’s new-generation of iPhone, dubbed iPhone 4.
Yesterday, Powerchip bought NT$501 million in semiconductor manufacturing facilities and equipment from Applied Materials South East Asia, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is