Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), the world’s second-largest contract manufacturer of laptop PCs, yesterday announced that it was purchasing Toshiba Corp’s LCD TV manufacturing plant in Mexico as part of its efforts to boost LCD TV production.
The Taiwanese maker said in a statement that it has entered into a contract to acquire Toshiba Electromex SA de CV, which is located in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The statement did not disclose investment figures except to say the deal was expected to be completed by September, pending regulatory approval.
The deal is expected to help Compal secure stable orders from Toshiba, which is one of Compal’s major TV customers.
Brand customers will sometimes sell their production facilities to contract manufacturers as a means to save costs and outsource future orders.
Through the purchase, contract manufacturers hope to ensure stable orders from these clients and at the same time expand production facilities.
For instance, Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) spent NT$100 million (US$3 million) in 2005 to acquire assets of two of Hewlett-Packard Co’s manufacturing facilities, one each in Australia and India.
In 2008, Hon Hai invested US$18 million to buy a cellphone manufacturing plant in Mexico from Motorola Inc.
“By acquiring Toshiba Electromex, Compal looks forward to expanding LCD TV manufacturing flexibility, diversified sales mix, and revenue growth momentum in the future,” the statement said.
Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) said at the Computex technology trade fair in Taipei early last month that the company was setting its sights on “four screens” to fuel future growth momentum.
These four screens are notebooks, tablet PCs, TVs and smartphones.
The company expects to produce 8 million LCD TVs this year, up from last year’s 5.4 million, he said.
Shares of Compal closed down 1.5 percent to NT$33.5 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day