Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) yesterday said it would keep its internal discussions over the buyout of the Taiwanese media outlets of Hong Kong-listed Next Media Group (壹傳媒集團) secret until the deal is signed on Saturday.
FPG, the nation’s biggest diversified industrial company, refused to say whether it would raise its share proportion in the buyout plan.
Local media yesterday said the group might have to increase its shareholding after the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Tuesday asked Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒), the eldest son of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) founder and chairman Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松), not to hold more than a 20 percent stake in Next Media’s Taiwan operations.
On Saturday last week, FPG chairman William Wong (王文淵) said the group would hold a meeting yesterday to discuss the buyout. However, the group abruptly canceled the meeting at noon yesterday, saying it had completed its discussions on Tuesday.
Shares of the group’s four core subsidiaries extended their losses yesterday in Taipei trading from Tuesday, except for Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), which was unchanged at NT$80.1.
Formosa Plastics Corp (FPC, 台塑) saw its shares lose 3.18 percent to NT$70, Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), dropped 1.43 percent to end at NT$48.40, while Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化纖) closed down 1.95 percent at NT$60.3.
In Hong Kong, Next Media unexpectedly suspended trading of its shares at 10:08am, after they fell 12.987 percent to HK$1.34. Its shares fell 2.6 percent on Tuesday after it warned on Monday of “a substantial loss” for the first half of the year because of write-offs at its multimedia division in Taiwan.
Last month, Koo Jr inked a memorandum of understanding with Hong Kong mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英) to buy Next Media’s Taiwan operations, including the Apple Daily, Next Magazine and Next TV (壹電視) for NT$17.5 billion (US$600.86 million).
AI SERVER DEMAND: ‘Overall industry demand continues to outpace supply and we are expanding capacity to meet it,’ the company’s chief executive officer said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported that net profit last quarter rose 27 percent from the same quarter last year on the back of demand for cloud services and high-performance computing products. Net profit surged to NT$44.36 billion (US$1.48 billion) from NT$35.04 billion a year earlier. On a quarterly basis, net profit grew 5 percent from NT$42.1 billion. Earnings per share expanded to NT$3.19 from NT$2.53 a year earlier and NT$3.03 in the first quarter. However, a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar since early May has weighed on the company’s performance, Hon Hai chief financial officer David Huang (黃德才)
The Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show, which is to be held from Wednesday to Saturday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, would showcase the latest in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven robotics and automation technologies, the organizer said yesterday. The event would highlight applications in smart manufacturing, as well as information and communications technology, the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association said. More than 1,000 companies are to display innovations in semiconductors, electromechanics, industrial automation and intelligent manufacturing, it said in a news release. Visitors can explore automated guided vehicles, 3D machine vision systems and AI-powered applications at the show, along
FORECAST: The greater computing power needed for emerging AI applications has driven higher demand for advanced semiconductors worldwide, TSMC said The government-supported Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has raised its forecast for this year’s growth in the output value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry to above 22 percent on strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. In its latest IEK Current Quarterly Model report, the institute said the local semiconductor industry would have output of NT$6.5 trillion (US$216.6 billion) this year, up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, an upward revision from a 19.1 percent increase estimate made in May. The strong showing of the local semiconductor industry largely reflected the stronger-than-expected performance of the integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing segment,
NVIDIA FACTOR: Shipments of AI servers powered by GB300 chips would undergo pilot runs this quarter, with small shipments possibly starting next quarter, it said Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which supplies artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp chips, yesterday said that AI servers are on track to account for 70 percent of its total server revenue this year, thanks to improved yield rates and a better learning curve for Nvidia’s GB300 chip-based servers. AI servers accounted for more than 60 percent of its total server revenue in the first half of this year, Quanta chief financial officer Elton Yang (楊俊烈) told an online conference. The company’s latest production learning curve of the AI servers powered by Nvidia’s GB200 chips has improved after overcoming key component
RSS