US power management chipmaker Fairchild Semiconductor Interna-tional Inc yesterday said that it planned to acquire Taiwanese power conversion chip designer System General Corp (崇貿科技) for US$200 million in cash to secure sales and profit growth.
Fairchild's offer is the latest bid by a foreign firm to buy out a Taiwanese company after the US-based private fund equity group led by Carlyle offered to buy local chip packager Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (
Fairchild Semiconductor has offered to buy System General's total of 68.97 million outstanding shares at NT$93 (US$2.85) per share, the South Portland, Maine-based power management chipmaker said in a statement posted on its Web site yesterday.
That would represent about a 13-percent premium to System General's closing price of NT$91.8 yesterday, setting a 12-month high after finishing at NT$92.2 on Jan. 3 last year.
The acquisition would be made through a chipmaking subsidiary of Fairchild, with System General emerging as the surviving company, the statement said.
The Taiwanese company's management team and all 250 employees in Taiwan, China and US branches would be retained after the deal is closed, it added.
In response, System General said that its board of directors would hold an ad hoc meeting tomorrow to decide whether to accept or reject Fairchild's offer, company spokeswoman Chen Yu-ling (陳玉玲) said in a telephone interview.
System General, established in 1983, may stop trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange by the end of this year if the acquisition is completed based on Fairchild Semiconductor's plan, Chen said.
Earlier last month, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported that Taiwan's top power system manufacturer Delta Electronics Corp (
"Acquiring System General is a natural extension of Fairchild's business strategy to invest aggressively to expand our sales and margins by pursuing fast-growing power analog markets," Fairchild Semiconductor chief executive Mark Thompson said in a statement.
Fairchild Semiconductor said it expected the acquisition to have a neutral effect on Fairchild's earnings per share this year and to be accretive to earnings per share next year and beyond.
The US company said that 30.88 percent of System General's shareholders have already agreed to tender their shares.
The company hired Yuanta Core Pacific Securities (
System General saw its net income drop 23.4 percent year-on-year to NT$144 million (US$4.44 million) in the first three quarters of last year after the US International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Fairchild Semiconductor's rival Power Integrations Inc in a patent lawsuit.
During the same period, revenues edged up a mere 0.38 percent to NT$895 million.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has secured three construction permits for its plan to build a state-of-the-art A14 wafer fab in Taichung, and is likely to start construction soon, the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau said yesterday. Speaking with CNA, Wang Chun-chieh (王俊傑), deputy director general of the science park bureau, said the world’s largest contract chipmaker has received three construction permits — one to build a fab to roll out sophisticated chips, another to build a central utility plant to provide water and electricity for the facility and the other to build three office buildings. With the three permits, TSMC
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
The DBS Foundation yesterday announced the launch of two flagship programs, “Silver Motion” and “Happier Caregiver, Healthier Seniors,” in partnership with CCILU Ltd, Hondao Senior Citizens’ Welfare Foundation and the Garden of Hope Foundation to help Taiwan face the challenges of a rapidly aging population. The foundation said it would invest S$4.91 million (US$3.8 million) over three years to foster inclusion and resilience in an aging society. “Aging may bring challenges, but it also brings opportunities. With many Asian markets rapidly becoming super-aged, the DBS Foundation is working with a regional ecosystem of like-minded partners across the private, public and people sectors
BREAKTHROUGH TECH: Powertech expects its fan-out PLP system to become mainstream, saying it can offer three-times greater production throughput Chip packaging service provider Powertech Technology Inc (力成科技) plans to more than double its capital expenditures next year to more than NT$40 billion (US$1.31 billion) as demand for its new panel-level packaging (PLP) technology, primarily used in chips for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, has greatly exceeded what it can supply. A significant portion of the budget, about US$1 billion, would be earmarked for fan-out PLP technology, Powertech told investors yesterday. Its heavy investment in fan-out PLP technology over the past 10 years is expected to bear fruit in 2027 after the technology enters volume production, it said, adding that the tech would
RSS