Local flat panel maker TPO Displays Corp (統寶光電), yesterday said it is selling a handset panel production line located in Japan, a move an analyst said may give a boost to the company's long-term turnaround efforts.
TPO, the world's No. 9 maker of small-and-medium sized flat panels, has lost money each year for the past four years.
TPO shares made their debut in 2003 on the nation's Emerging Stock Market.
The company eked out a NT$57 million (US$1.7 million) net profit in 2002.
Shares of TPO jumped 5.1 percent to NT$8.45 and its parent company Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) climbed by 3.83 percent to NT$31.15 yesterday on the news, outperforming the benchmark TAIEX index's 1.29 percent gain.
"The company is planning to sell production equipment located in Japan," TPO said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
TPO was formerly known as Toppoly Optoelectronics Corp before it was renamed last June.
The company, which is based in Miaoli County, did not disclose details about the value of the transaction or the potential buyer, citing a non-disclosure agreement.
TPO's statement came after the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday that TPO was in talks with Chinese panel component maker Shenzhen Laibao Hi-Tech Co (
TPO makes handset screens at the Japanese plant, which it obtained through a US$21 million deal with Royal Philips Electronics NV last year.
"The deal will be good for TPO as the fixed expense will be lower," said Roger Yu (
Selling the cost-inefficient factory would also put TPO in a better position to return to the black this year as demand for panels recovers, Yu said.
During the first four months of the year, TPO posted revenues of NT$1 billion, a 20 percent rise over the NT$839 million it reported for the same period last year.
Overall, the revenues of global small-and-medium flat panel makers are
expected to fall 5 percent annually to US$16.6 billion this year from US$17
billion last year as panel prices continue to erode, market researcher
Display Search forecast.
However, tightening supplies of panels will partly offset price declines,
DisplaySearch said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS