Chip tester and packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品) said yesterday its board had approved a plan to acquire 22.87 million shares in Singapore’s Microcircuit Technology Pte Ltd at US$0.8965 per share.
With a total investment of US$20.5 million, Siliconware Precision said it would secure a 42.27 percent share in Microcircuit Technology, according to a company filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday after the closure of the local stock market.
The planned 42.27 percent share will make Siliconware Precision the second-largest shareholder in the Singaporean company, after AEM Holdings Ltd’s 57.73 percent.
AEM Holdings is a group of companies whose core businesses include the designing and manufacturing of equipment, precision components and organic substrates.
Siliconware Precision’s share price was unchanged at NT$30.5 in Taipei trading yesterday, having risen 12.5 percent so far this year versus the TAIEX’s 1.38 percent rise over the same period of time, the stock exchange’s data showed.
Under the new partnership, Siliconware Precision hopes to develop new chip scale package (CSP) products for wire-bonding and flip-chip ball-grid-array packaging processes.
“The purpose of the investment is to develop next-generation substrates and increase substrate suppliers of other product applications,” Siliconware Precision said in the filing.
The company currently counts on printed circuit board and substrate makers such as Unimicron Technology Corp (欣興電子), Nan Ya Printed Circuit Board Corp (南亞電路板) and Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corp (景碩科技) as major suppliers.
Despite uncertainty over the European debt crisis and a lukewarm recovery in the global economy, Siliconware Precision chairman Bough Lin (林文伯) said last week that the company’s major customers were still upbeat about the outlook for the second half of the year.
Lin said the company would maintain its annual high capital spending over the next three years, expecting that chip demand would increase because of rapid growth in smartphones and tablets.
On April 25, the company said it would increase capital expenditure this year by nearly 60 percent to NT$17.5 billion, from NT$11 billion last year, to improve its production technology and meet rising demand.
Additional reporting by Lisa Wang
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