Mosel Vitelic Inc (茂矽), parent of the nation's second-largest memory-chip manufacturer ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), managed to reduce a predicted 2003 loss of NT$8.3 billion by 45 percent to just NT$4.6 billion, the company told the TAIEX in a statement yesterday morning.
But the better-than-expected result does not mean that cash-strapped Mosel is out of the woods yet, as much of the improvement may have come from selling off assets in its core dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip manufacturing business, analysts said.
"The reason that Mosel has revised its earnings/loss is that it sold its DRAM operating assets to ProMOS just before Christmas," said Alfred Ying (應宗傑), an analyst at BNP Paribas in Taipei. "Because of this Mosel booked a big profit."
Mosel's shares rose NT$0.13, or 6.1 percent, to close at NT$2.28 on the TAIEX following the announcement.
On Christmas Eve, Mosel spokeswoman Peng Chuo-lan (彭卓蘭) said the company planned to sell its DRAM business -- including 100 percent of US subsidiary United Memories Inc and 50 percent of Mosel Vitelic (US) Corp -- to ProMOS for US$120 million.
Before the sale of its DRAM assets, Mosel had seen a surge in DRAM sales, reporting memory chip revenue of NT$4.6 billion in October and November -- more than double the same two-month period a year earlier. Mosel is also selling more chips on behalf of ProMOS after its former partner, Germany's Infineon Technologies AG, pulled out of the joint venture last year over a dispute about who would control the chipmaker.
But with no manufacturing base, Mosel has lost its major revenue generator.
"Starting from the sale of its DRAM assets to ProMOS, Mosel's sales will not include DRAM chips and will therefore see a rapid decline," Ying said. "I'm still not very positive about Mosel's future. Its only option is to sell shares in ProMOS."
Another analyst was slightly more optimistic for the company's prospects this year, saying that its shares in ProMOS would ensure its survival.
"Mosel's problems are gradually being eased as it still has a lot of shares in ProMOS which they can continue to liquidate to create cash to repay its debts," said James Huang, (
Only last Friday, Mosel applied to sell 200 million shares in ProMOS to raise money to pay off its remaining debt. Mosel aims to hold just over 600 million shares in ProMOS after the sale, the statement said.
In the spring and summer of last year, Mosel had to apply to creditors to restructure almost NT$6 billion in overdue debt that it could not repay.
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],”
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy