Ju Teng International Holdings Ltd (巨騰), the second Taiwanese-owned Chinese company to list on the local stock exchange, rose by its daily limit on its first day of trading yesterday.
The maker of notebook computer casings surged 6.9 percent to NT$18.5 in Taipei. Shares were sold at NT$17.3 each, at the higher end of its NT$14.25 to NT$19 price range.
Ju Teng, whose shares now trade in Hong Kong and which operates plants in China, sold shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange after the successful listing of Want Want China Holdings Ltd (中國旺旺控股) last month.
“Investors saw Want Want’s strong debut and think the same success can be replicated on Ju Teng,” said Parker Wu (吳年恭), a fund manager at the Agricultural Bank of Taiwan (全國農業金庫), who helps oversee the equivalent of US$44 million.
Last week Ju Teng chairman Cheng Li-yu (鄭立育) said the company’s growth this year, impacted by the global downturn, could fall short of previous years.
But the company has begun to see a demand pickup, with revenues in March and last month growing more than 20 percent compared with those in January and February. Order visibility for some products has extended to the fourth quarter, Cheng said.
After manufacturers raced to launch new netbooks last year, demand for plastic casings grew as companies tried to cut costs, boosting Ju Teng’s plastic casing shipment to 50 million units last year.
Based on notebook computer shipments of between 130 million and 140 million units last year, Ju Teng’s casings had a market share of more than 30 percent.
Local contract notebook computer makers, including Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), Wistron Corp (緯創) and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) are all Ju Teng clients. Its top five clients account for 90 percent of the company’s revenues.
As the PC industry moves toward lightweight notebooks this year, manufacturers are increasingly using metal casings to enhance strength and durability.
Ju Teng teamed up with Compal to form metal casing firm Jubao Precision Machining (Jiangsu) Co (巨寶), which shipped around 700,000 units last month. Cheng said Jubao will expand its production capacity after next month to reach 2 million units a month by the end of the year.
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