TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), which supplies touch modules for Apple Inc’s smartwatches and iPads, on Thursday said it plans to raise between US$120 million and US$200 million via a syndicated loan in order to repay debts and fund company operations in the midterm.
Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐銀行) would lead arrangements for the syndicated loan, TPK said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
TPK did not provide details about how it would use the proceeds.
The company in February said it planned to spend NT$7.5 billion (US$256 million) this year primarily to expand its lamination capacity and buy new equipment, in order to cope with new product launches by some of its major clients in the second half of this year.
Apple is TPK’s biggest client, contributing 70 percent of the firm’s revenue.
TPK’s capital spending for this year is 62 percent greater than last year’s NT$4.63 billion, marking the first significant increase over the past three years after the company’s restructuring efforts.
The company posted NT$20.85 billion in revenue for last quarter, down 36.6 percent from NT$32.87 billion in the fourth quarter of last year. The figure matched TPK’s estimate in February.
TPK is scheduled to hold a quarterly investors’ conference on May 3 to share its financial figures for last quarter.
TPK chief executive officer H.H. Chiang (江懷海) is to make his first public appearance since assuming the position in September last year.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to