Solar wafer maker Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技) yesterday said its board of directors had approved a proposal to dissolve the company, after its turnaround efforts failed.
The move came after checks from the debt-ridden firm bounced earlier this month.
Tatung Co (大同) chairwoman Lin Kuo Wen-yen (林郭文艷) last week refused to take on the position of Green Energy board director after she was elected on June 27.
The move suggests that Tatung, Green Energy’s parent company, has no intention of helping the unit. Tatung is the firm’s biggest shareholder with a stake of 28 percent.
Green Energy is to hold an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting in Taoyuan on Aug. 30 to approve a plan to disband the company, it said in a statement submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) yesterday.
The firm has been unable to generate a positive cash flow as polysilicon wafers are selling at less than they cost to manufacture, the company said.
The plan will affect 68,128 shareholders.
Green Energy plans to lay off 284 employees to save on labor and operating costs, it said in a separate statement.
The company had 339 employees as of March 31.
Green Energy attributed the company’s demise to the unfavorable economic environment, including trade barriers set up by the US, China and India.
The solar wafer maker saw losses increase to NT$7.09 billion (US$228.33 million) last year from NT$619.14 million in 2017, its annual report showed.
Gross margin deteriorated to minus-40.26 percent last year from minus-0.31 percent in 2017.
The company has accumulated losses totaling NT$20.56 billion in the past 11 years, driving its net value down to minus-NT$5.53 per share at the end of last year.
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