Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子), the nation’s largest LCD panel maker, said its board yesterday approved plans to sell up to 1 billion new shares in the form of global depositary receipts (GDRs).
The company, part of Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團), said in a stock exchange filing that it planned to use the proceeds to fund factory expansion, purchase equipment and raw materials overseas, strengthen its working capital and repay bank loans.
Chimei said in the filing that the board had not decided on the price for the GDR issuance.
With the company’s share prices ending at NT$32.2 per share yesterday in Taipei trading, the company could raise as much as NT$32.2 billion (US$1.11 billion) through the overseas offering.
Chimei will seek shareholders’ approval for the share sale plan at the company’s annual general meeting scheduled on June 28 in Miaoli County. During the meeting, shareholders will also review the company’s performance last year, when Chimei reported a net loss of NT$14.84 billion, or NT$2.29 loss per share.
Meanwhile, both Far Eastern New Century Corp (遠東新世紀) and Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業) said they planned to sell five-year unsecured bonds to repay short-term debt and strengthen financial structure.
Far Eastern will sell NT$3.8 billion in bonds at an interest rate of 1.5 percent and Uni-President will issue NT$3 billion in such debt with an interest rate of 1.43 percent, according to their separate filings to the stock exchange.
Taiwan’s stable economic outlook and businesses’ refinancing needs have offered a firm support to Taiwanese companies’ bond issuance over the past 12 months, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Ratings Services said in a report last month.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) said on March 19 it planned to sell up to NT$12 billion worth of bonds to repay short-term debt.
“New corporate bond and bank debenture issuances in Taiwan rose 23 percent in the second half of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009,” S&P credit analyst Patty Wang (王珮齡) said in a statement on March 21.
S&P said the new debt issue in Taiwan would remain strong over the next few quarters, albeit at a slower growth pace than last year.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day