TUTORING SERVICES
Bexcellent up 34% on IPO
Shares of Bexcellent Group Holdings Ltd (精英匯集團控股), whose top tutor earns more than HK$40 million (US$5.1 million) a year, yesterday surged as much as 34 percent on their first day of trading in Hong Kong. The provider of tutoring services to Hong Kong secondary-school students was so popular that individual investors placed orders for about 289 times the stock initially available to them. Bexcellent raised HK$135 million in its initial public offering (IPO) after pricing the shares near the top of a marketed range. This was in contrast to Xiaomi Corp (小米), which two weeks ago priced its IPO at the low end. Bexcellent shares closed at HK$1.32, a 22 percent gain from the IPO price of HK$1.08.
RANKINGS
Largan tops Asia300 list
Smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) topped Nikkei’s Asia300 list of the 325 fastest-growing and most valuable companies in the region, excluding Japan. The Nikkei Asian Review, which produced the list, said it used five criteria to determine the ranking: average revenue and net profit growth, return on equity, net profit margin and the ratio of shareholder equity to total assets over the past five years. India’s TCL Technologies Holding Ltd came in second, ahead of Indonesian property developer Bumi Serpong Damai, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) tied with Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) in fourth place, Nikkei said.
PLASTICS
FPC executive out on bail
Taipei prosecutors yesterday released former high-ranking Formosa Plastics Corp (FPC, 台塑) executive Lee Sun-ju (李孫儒) on NT$5 million (US$163,634) bail as he faces allegations of receiving tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars in kickbacks from the firm’s suppliers. Lee was questioned yesterday at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for suspected contraventions of the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法). He was in charge of procurement in his role as deputy general manager of the information technology department.
TRADE
TAITRA official upbeat
Taiwan has spent the past few years diversifying its export markets and promoting industrial transformation, which should help minimize the effects of the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China, a Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) official said on Thursday. “Even if the US-China trade war drags on, Taiwan must be prepared, but not panic,” TAITRA vice chairman Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠) said at a seminar sponsored by the Stimson Center on the impact of the trade dispute. TAITRA contacted China-based Taiwanese businesses before the trade dispute began and several forecast that it would take three to six months to gauge its impact, Liu said. “Taiwan will unavoidably be affected if the US-China trade war develops into a long drawn-out affair,” Liu said.
INVESTMENT
Green loans, bonds surge
As of the end of May, domestic banks’ total outstanding loans to the green energy sector stood at NT$1.089 trillion, while insurance companies’ investment in power plants using renewable energy sources reached NT$7.48 billion, Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed. In addition, NT$41.8 billion of green bonds were sold in Taiwan. The numbers were up by NT$44.2 billion, NT$2.13 billion and NT$21.2 billion respectively from the levels recorded at the end of last year.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is accelerating capacity expansion fivefold this year, but it is still unable to keep up with the booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said yesterday. This year alone, the company is building 25 chip manufacturing fabs and advanced packaging facilities worldwide, including 13 plants in Taiwan, which is unprecedented, Hou said at a CEO Summit fireside chat at Semicon Taiwan in Taipei. In the past, the company was able to build five or six factories a year, said Hou, who is also chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry
EXPANSION: The 3-hectare site would include small clean rooms and laboratories as well as a world-class training base for advanced packaging talent, the company said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is to establish a presence in the Baipu Industrial Park (白埔產業園區) in Kaohsiung to accelerate the testing and validation of semiconductor materials and equipment, a company executive said on Tuesday. The company is working with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Kaohsiung City Government on the plan, which is expected to improve validation efficiency by 25 to 50 percent, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC global summit held ahead of the Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opened in Taipei yesterday. TSMC would also conduct
Visitors look at a 64-qubit superconducting quantum computer on display at the Fujitsu booth at the Semicon Taiwan trade show in Taipei yesterday.
Silicon photonics would play a dominant role next year and make chip-level co-packaged optics (CPO) packaging possible, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. “For years, critics questioned the reliability of CPO. The doubts are being thoroughly dismantled by real-world data and market validation,” TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology development K.C. Hsu (徐國晉) said at a SEMI forum in Taipei. The company is on track to enter production of CPO later this year, Hsu said in another forum arranged by Imec in Taipei yesterday, about four months after TSMC announced its progress in CPO development in May.
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