Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) has raised a total of US$1 billion from corporate bonds issued in two tranches, according to a statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday.
In the statement, Hon Hai said that through its fully owned subsidiary Foxconn (Far East) Ltd, it had sold US$600 million worth of five-year bonds with a 2.25 percent coupon and US$400 million worth of 10-year bonds with a 3 percent coupon.
Hon Hai said it plans to use the proceeds to fund capital expenditures, debt refinancing and for general corporate financing.
The bond sale was the biggest fundraising activity by Hon Hai since 2014, when it raised NT$94 billion (US$2.97 billion) in a rights issue and global depositary receipts, local media reported yesterday.
It was also the first time since 2010 that Hon Hai has raised US dollar-denominated funds, when it issued US$1 billion in overseas corporate bonds, the reports said.
Before its latest fundraising effort, Hon Hai had been sitting on more than NT$200 billion in cash, and the bond sales are expected to boost the company’s coffers to allow for more acquisitions and future expansion, according to the reports.
The interest rates on the Hon Hai bonds were relatively low, compared with an average of 3-4 percent in bond yields set in the global market, since the company has sound fundamentals and is creditworthy, analysts said.
Meanwhile, Japanese media yesterday reported that South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co had disposed of its holdings in Sharp Corp after Hon Hai completed its acquisition of a 66 percent stake for US$3.5 billion last month.
Before Hon Hai’s acquisition, Samsung had held a 3 percent stake in Sharp, but its stake had been diluted by Hon Hai’s presence to 0.7 percent, the reports said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the