Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫) yesterday said that it has organized a US$40 million syndicated loan extended to a unit of Yieh Phui Enterprise Co (燁輝), one of the leading steelmakers in the country.
Taiwan Cooperative Bank, the banking flagship of Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (合庫金控), said that the loan to Yieh Phui (Hong Kong) Holdings Co (燁輝香港控股) with a maturity of three years is aimed at expanding the company’s working capital and improving its financial conditions.
The bank served as the coordinator for the loan, which is supported by the Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行), First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) and Sunny Bank (陽信銀行).
Taiwan Cooperative Bank said that the lenders used the London Interbank Offered Rate as the benchmark for the interest rate, but declined to disclose more information about the financial terms.
Yieh Phui Enterprise plans to continue to expand its production capacity in China and upgrade its production technology by entering the lucrative market of automotive steel to boost its bottom line, Taiwan Cooperative Bank said.
According to Yieh Phui’s financial statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, its total debt reached NT$39.87 billion (US$1.27 billion), including NT$14.48 billion in long-term debt with a maturity of more than one year, as of the end of September last year.
The latest total loan figure was higher than the NT$36.72 billion recorded at the end of December 2013.
At the end of September last year, Yieh Phui held US$8.96 billion in cash and cash equivalents, compared with NT$8.18 billion recorded at the end of December 2013.
In the first nine months of last year, Yieh Phui posted NT$0.48 earnings per share, up from NT$0.04 recorded over the same period of the previous year.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by