The board of local flat-panel maker Prime View International Co (元太科技) yesterday approved a plan to sell a maximum of 70 million common shares via private placement at home or overseas to pay back syndicated loans.
To fund the acquisition of bankrupt South Korean panel maker BOE-Hydis Technology Co, Prime View had earlier signed a NT$6 billion (US$197.3 million) loan agreement with a group of local banks led by Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀).
“The share sale is aimed at paying back the bank loans as payback is required in the short term,” company spokesman Stephen Chen (陳新宇) said by telephone.
Prime View could sell 70 million common shares to raise about NT$3.3 billion locally via private placement or abroad in the form of depositary receipts, it said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The share offering will be discussed and brought to vote in the annual shareholders’ meeting on June 13.
“We have not yet set a timetable [for the share sale] and have not settled on the price. We will act in accordance with changes in the market,” Chen said.
Prime View makes liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels used mostly in consumer electronics, including cellphones and portable disc players, and diversified into high-margin flexible displays in recent years.
The company plans to acquire a 95 percent stake in BOE-Hydis through a NT$9.3 billion buyout offer initiated last November by a consortium led by the Taiwanese firm.
Prime View expects to take over BOE-Hydis next month after completing the deal and to turn it around by the end of the year in light of increasing orders. BOE-Hydis largely makes LCD panels for notebook computers.
Prime View shares were unchanged at NT$46.8 yesterday, underperforming the TAIEX, which advanced 1.47 percent.
STATE SUBSIDIES: The talks over a factory in Dresden have a top end on par with what Japan is offering TSMC and outdo a cap other firms are being offered in Europe Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, is in talks to receive German government subsidies for as much as 50 percent of the costs to build a new semiconductor fab in the country, people familiar with the matter said. The government is in ongoing negotiations with TSMC, as well as its partners on the project — Bosch Ltd, NXP Semiconductors NV and Infineon Technologies AG — the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. No final decisions have been made and the final subsidy amount could still change. Any state aid must also
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) senior vice president of business development Kevin Zhang (張曉強) told reporters yesterday that talks over a possible plant in Germany are continuing and that the earliest decision would be in August. “I don’t want to get into the politics side of the thing, but I do think that there is a need for us to provide our customers with a diverse supply,” Zhang said, adding that Europe is a “very significant geography given the customer base ... [and] the demand.” Zhang did not confirm the size of subsidy or cost of the potential project or
South Korea would avoid capitalizing on China’s ban on a US chipmaker, seeing the move by Beijing as an attempt to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, a person familiar with the situation said. The South Korean government would not encourage its memorychip firms to grab market share in China lost by Micron Technology Inc, which has been barred for use in critical industries by Beijing on national security grounds, the person said. China is the biggest market for South Korea semiconductor firms Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc and home to some of their factories. Their operations in China
POWER FORWARD: The US company’s bullish revenue projection also lifted the shares of Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC and Japanese equipment supplier Advantest Nvidia Corp’s forecast for surging revenue surprised even the most bullish analysts on Wall Street, propelling the chipmaker to the cusp of a US$1 trillion market capitalization and igniting a global jump in stocks linked to artificial intelligence (AI). The Santa Clara, California-based company gained as much as 29 percent in extended US trading, on course for a record high, after saying it expects sales to reach about US$11 billion in the three months ending July. That gain puts Nvidia on track also to rack up the biggest one-day valuation jump in US company history. Nvidia, the biggest supplier of the advanced
RSS