Shares of Merry Electronics Co (美律) yesterday surged by the 10 percent daily limit after the company’s board approved the sale of a 51 percent stake in its manufacturing plant in Suzhou, China, to China’s Luxshare Precision Industry Co (立訊) for 530 million yuan (US$79.95 million).
Shares closed at NT$116.5, the highest level since Dec. 5, 2014, reflecting investors’ optimism in the collaboration between Merry and Luxshare.
The audio electronics maker’s sale of a majority stake in its Chinese subsidiary came after the Investment Commission on June 30 blocked Merry from selling a 25.4 percent stake of itself to Luxshare, citing concerns over industry development.
The board on Tuesday approved a 530 million yuan capital injection plan for its Suzhou subsidiary, with Luxshare’s subsidiary, Kunshan Liantao Electronics Corp (昆山聯濤電子), injecting the funds in exchange for a 51 percent stake. Given that the capital injection is for Merry’s Chinese subsidiary, it does not need to pass a commission review.
The 530 million yuan from Luxshare will boost the paid-in capital of Merry’s Suzhou subsidiary from US$45 million to US$91.83 million, Merry said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
The company plans to use the new funds to add 18 industrial automated production lines, tripling its capacity at the Suzhou plant, and expects the deal to benefit the two firms’ reach in the audio electronics market, the filing said.
Merry reported net income of NT$357.77 million (US$11.46 million) for the first half of this year, compared with NT$93.35 a year earlier, thanks to a larger sales scale, better non-operating gains and a lower-than-expected tax rate. Earnings per share rose from NT$0.96 to NT$1.96 over the period.
Consolidated sales rose 19.3 percent year-on-year to NT$7.44 billion in the first seven months, company data showed.
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