TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空), one of the nation’s international air carriers, expects to introduce a strategic investor before its primary listing on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE), scheduled for October or November, a company official said yesterday.
The air carrier plans to raise about NT$1.2 billion (US$41.37 million), or 100 million shares, in private equity capital, the official said.
“The investor will be a company with business experience of international airlines and which will therefore be able to help boost TransAsia technically and operationally,” company chairman Vincent Lin (林明昇) told a media briefing, after meeting with Japan Tourism Agency Commissioner Hiroshi Mizohata to celebrate the re-launch of charter flights to the city of Akita in Japan.
Photo: Lin Chia-chi, Taipei Times
However, Lin refused to reveal the investor’s name or further details of the case.
The company hoped to list its shares on the main bourse, if talks with the strategic investor went well.
TransAsia posted NT$409 million, or NT$0.72 per share, in profit for the first half of the year, compared with NT$964 million, or NT$1.91 per share, in the same period last year, the company said on Tuesday.
Lin said he expected earnings in the airline sector, including TransAsia, to grow in the second half of the year, compared with the first half, as oil prices fall and strong seasonal demand picks up.
Furthermore, TransAsia is also looking to offer regular flights on routes to Japan, and plans to file an application to do that with the Japanese government by the end of the year.
Currently, most of the air carrier’s flights between Taiwan and China and between Taiwan and Japan are charter flights, the company said.
Revenue stood at NT$863.86 million last month, up 3.35 percent from a year earlier, company data showed.
In the first seven months of the year, accumulated revenue amounted to NT$4.93 billion, representing an increase of 4.72 percent from the same period last year, data showed.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
RSS