Industrial automation system supplier DFI Inc (友通資訊) said that its board of directors approved a plan to acquire a local network security product maker for NT$555 million (US$18.03 million) in an effort to expand into the fast-growing, cloud-based cybersecurity business and to boost its automotive presence.
DFI, which is 45 percent owned by electronics maker Qisda Corp (佳世達), said that it plans to acquire a 51.26 percent stake in Aewin Technologies Co Ltd (其陽科技).
The company plans to subscribe 30 million Aewin shares at NT$18.5 per share via a private placement, a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed on Wednesday.
The offering implied a discount of 27 percent compared with Aewin’s closing price of NT$25.4 on Wednesday.
“Aewin is complementary to DFI in terms of product portfolio and sales channels,” DFI chairman Peter Chen (陳其宏) said in a statement.
“The combination will fuel growth by securing more high-value-added products,” he said.
Aewin supplies network security products to first-tier clients in the US and Europe. Those products include next-generation firewalls, application delivery controllers and unified threat management solutions.
Enterprises usually deploy software-defined networking in a wide area network (SD-WAN) through next-generation firewall devices to overcome network security risks.
The SD-WAN market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 59 percent to US$1.3 billion in 2021 as more enterprises introduce the technology to boost the availability of networks and to improve network cost management, energy consumption and Internet security, Gartner Inc said.
DFI’s revenue last year surged 36.55 percent year-over-year from NT$2.9 billion to NT$3.96 billion in the first three quarters, according to company financial statements filed with the exchange.
Net profits soared 47 percent to NT$479.8 million in the first three quarters of last year, compared with NT$326.56 million in the same period of 2017, or earnings per share of NT$1.37.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day