Allied Material Technology Corp (展茂光電), the nation's second-biggest maker of color filters for flat panels, yesterday said it would soon trim its workforce by about 8 percent to cope with the latest overcapacity-driven trough.
Facing financial difficulties, the company announced a major shake-up in its management team last month, affecting the company chairman and president.
Allied Material yesterday said it planned to lay off more than 70 workers after the Lunar New Year holidays, a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed. The company Web site shows that its workforce numbers 970 employees.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported that Allied Material planned to slash 150 jobs after suspending operations at a plant.
Dismissing the report, Allied Material said it only planned to cut production during the coming slow period in the flat-panel industry at two of its three factories and thereby minimize the impact of oversupply.
Color filters, among the main components in thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal-display (TFT-LCD) panels, represent approximately 20 percent of the total cost of a 17-inch computer panel.
Shares of Allied Material dropped 6.8 percent to NT$3.69 yesterday on the nation's over-the-counter GRETAI Securities Market after the stock was restricted from marginal trading on poor financials.
Allied Material posted losses of NT$1.75 billion (US$53.1 million) for the first three quarters of last year, compared with net income of NT$76.93 million in 2005.
The company board approved the proposal of raising a maximum NT$3 billion via private placements to reduce losses and improve operations. The company failed to pay NT$329 million in interest, due on Feb. 12, on a syndicated bank loan.
The company also rebutted speculation that its customers had switched to bigger rival Sintek Photronic Corp (
"None of our customers has canceled orders," chief executive Charles Yu (
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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