Elevator manufacturer Yungtay Engineering Co (永大機電) yesterday said it has received notification from Hitachi Ltd of a tender offer of up to NT$21.66 billion (US$702.5 million) to fully acquire its shares over the next month and a half.
Yungtay, which sells and distributes Hitachi elevators, said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange that the Japanese firm would commence the tender offer from today to March 7.
Hitachi, together with its wholly owned subsidiary Hitachi Building Systems Co, owns 11.7 percent of Yungtay’s total outstanding shares of 408.69 million.
It announced in October last year plans to acquire the rest of Yungtay’s stock via a public tender offer at NT$60 per share.
Hitachi said it has obtained approval from regulatory authorities for the public tender offer, according to a statement posted on the company’s Web site yesterday.
With the acquisition, Hitachi aims to strengthen its collaboration with Yungtay to boost its elevator and escalator business in China and Asia, as well as to accelerate the global expansion of its products and services.
Yungtay has been a business partner of Hitachi for more than 50 years, Hitachi said.
Hitachi last year signed a contract with Hsu Chou-li (許作立), a member of Yungtay’s founding family, which said that he would tender his 4.3 percent shareholding after Hitachi’s offer is filed and published.
Yungtay reported a net profit of NT$590 million in the first three quarters of last year, down 39.45 percent from a year earlier, due to non-operating losses. Earnings per share plunged to NT$1.44 from NT$2.38.
Last year, Yungtay’s revenue slid 10.9 percent to NT$1.16 billion from NT$1.3 billion in 2017.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by