Caswell Inc (瑞祺電通) shares yesterday surged 56.44 percent to NT$158 from the initial offering price of NT$110 during its debut on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, with more than 4.41 million shares changing hands.
Caswell, a Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) unit that makes network communications, industrial computing and network security equipment, has been expanding into the cloud computing and industrial automation fields, company chairman Steve Chu (朱復銓) said at a listing ceremony.
It plans to transition into a developer of software and solutions from a hardware supplier to tap into rising demand for information security, as the global Internet industries sector continues to see record-breaking growth, Chu said.
The company in 2016 began making high-end network communication equipment certified for use by major telecoms, including virtual and universal customer premises equipment, cloud storage servers and industrial surveillance systems that help tackle wide temperature swings, Chu said.
Caswell last year secured partnerships with a number of major US and Japanese telecoms to develop software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) products, which helped boost order visibility this year.
SD-WAN products last quarter contributed about 20 percent of the company’s sales, which rose 9.8 percent annually to NT$952 million (US$32.4 million), marking the company’s second-strongest showing during the January-to-March period.
Sales last month rose 54.9 percent sequentially and 14.7 percent annually to NT$390 million.
The company also approved a plan to distribute a cash dividend of NT$4 per common share, translating to a dividend yield of 3.96 percent based on its initial public offering price of NT$101.
The distribution was based on the company’s net profit last year of NT$336 million, or earnings per share of NT$5.61.
Caswell, whose business involves network communications and industrial computing, is 38.73 percent held by the group through its industrial PC arm, Ennoconn Corp (樺漢科技).
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