Contract electronics maker Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday announced plans to buy back its own shares that have taken a hit amid ongoing market turmoil.
The Taipei-based firm is the first original design manufacturer to announce a buyback scheme this year after the TAIEX dropped below the 10-year average.
Pegatron plans to spend NT$4 billion (US$118.22 million) buying back 50 million shares on the open market in an attempt to protect its shareholders’ interests, the company said in a filing with the stock exchange.
The company’s shares fell 6.67 percent since the beginning of this year and plunged 15.37 percent from a year earlier.
Company board members gave the go-ahead for the buyback plan, which is to take place as long as share prices stand between NT$46.3 and NT$80 per share in the open market, the filing said, adding that the company is to start buying back shares the next time its stock price drops below NT$46.3.
The buyback scheme is to start today and last through March 21, it said, adding that the shares would be canceled after being repurchased.
The company, an assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, considered the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios relatively low and decided to take action to lend support, a Pegatron investor relations official said by telephone.
Pegatron’s P/E ratios stands at about 6.79, considering an earnings per share of NT$9.89 for last year and the company shares’ closing price of NT$67.2 in the local bourse yesterday.
The buyback plan would help the company preserve its capital stock in case it decides to issue new shares in the future, the official said.
This is the second time Pegatron is carrying out a buyback plan.
The company purchased 75 million shares in 2010 when the price of its shares dropped below NT$41.
After purchasing 29.6 million shares, Pegatron ended the buyback scheme as its stock price rose above NT$41 per share.
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