Hotai Finance Co (和潤企業) plans to issue 140 million new shares in an initial public offering (IPO) on the local main bourse scheduled for Dec. 9 as it looks to raise new capital for business expansion.
Before the listing, the company allocated about 126 million new shares to be sold via a sealed bid auction and public subscription arranged by underwriters led by Taishin Securities Co (台新證券), the vehicle loan and insurance service unit of Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) said on Monday.
About 101.08 million shares are to be sold via the auction over three days through today, with a floor price of NT$45.69, while those for the public subscription would have a floor price of NT$53, it said.
The company expects the listing to help expand its business scope to loans for commercial vehicles, motorcycles, machine tools, construction equipment and medical devices, from its vehicle loan business at home and in China.
COMMERCIAL VEHICLES
Hotai Finance president Lin Yen-liang (林彥良) on Wednesday last week told investors that the company was upbeat about the loan business for commercial vehicles, such as heavy trucks and motorcycles, citing brisk vehicle sales.
Commercial vehicle loans are forecast to reach NT$10 billion (US$327.87 million) per year based on annual sales of 25,000 vehicles, Hotai Finance said.
Motorcycle loans are also expected to reach NT$10 billion per year, with annual vehicle sales of 75,000 units, it said.
In the first three quarters of this year, the company reported NT$69.9 billion of auto loans, up 3.4 percent from NT$67.6 billion in the same period last year.
Auto loans last year grew 13.4 percent to NT$92.1 billion, from NT$81.2 billion in 2017, the company said.
Hotai Finance, which is 66 percent owned by Hotai Motor, reported that net profit in the first three quarters surged 32 percent annually to NT$1.82 billion, from NT$1.38 billion a year earlier.
Earnings per share rose from NT$3.5 to NT$4.55.
The company said it aims to leverage Hotai Motor’s strong market position to boost its auto loans.
Hotai Motor, which sells Toyota and Lexus brand vehicles in Taiwan, seized a 32 percent share of the local auto market in the first three quarters, Hotai Finance said.
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