Cash-strapped computer memory chipmaker ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) started to buy back US$335 million in convertible bonds at US$100 each yesterday, the company’s filing with Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Ltd showed.
“The tender offer is intended to fully satisfy requests submitted with respect to 97.4 percent of the bonds outstanding to redeem the bonds on February 14, 2009,” ProMOS said in the filing.
The prices of the tender offer represent just 10 percent, or a deep discount of 90 percent, of the bonds face value of US$1,000.
The tender offer expires on March 21.
Apart from a base tender of US$100, the company provides an early tender premium of US$100 and an extra success premium of up to US$65, if interested bondholders participate in the tender before March 2, the filing said.
For instance, if a bondholder tenders bonds before the early tender time and the tender offer success rate exceeds 82 percent, the bondholders will receive US$230 for each US$1,000 in bondholdings (including a US$100 base tender, US$100 early tender premium and US$30 in extra success premium) but excluding brokerage fees.
The repayment will rise to US$265 per US$1,000 principal if the success rate is above 86 percent.
However, the whole tender offer will be considered a failure if the minimum tender acceptance rate is below 79 percent, ProMOS said.
“The tender offer is conditional on a minimum tender acceptance rate of 79 percent,” the company said in its filing.
The Hsinchu-based manufacturer of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips has been under immense financial pressure after 97.4 percent of its bondholders applied on Feb. 14 to redeem the five-year overseas convertible bonds, which the company issued on Feb. 14, 2007 and will mature in 2012.
ProMOS said on Thursday it faced US$326.92 million in principal redemption requests out of a total of US$335.62 million in outstanding bonds.
ProMOS experienced an operating loss of NT$24.5 billion last year. It now has debt totaling NT$85.9 billion, while its cash balance dropped to NT$200 million as of Jan. 31, from NT$2.6 billion as of June 30 last year, a separate filing showed on Thursday.
To help repay the debt and avoid a default, ProMOS had applied for a syndicated loan of NT$5 billion (US$144 million) from eight state-run banks.
However, it has only secured NT$3 billion, less than a third of what it needs to repay the debt.
Shares of ProMOS, which were downgraded to a full-cash delivery stock by stock exchange regulator on Thursday, continued falling by the daily limit yesterday and closed at NT$1.28 on the GRETAI Securities Market.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS