Huga Optotech Inc (廣稼), a leading manufacturer of light-emitting diodes (LED), yesterday denied local media reports that it was sending workers on unpaid leave, saying it has encouraged employees to take annual leave and strengthened their training programs.
The clarification came after several local Chinese-language newspapers said the Greater Taichung-based company became Taiwan’s first technology firm to furlough workers to help cope with falling business.
“The reports of [our using] unpaid leave are inaccurate,” Huga said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
There are about 1,300 people on the LED maker’s payroll.
The company said it had struck an agreement with employees before asking them to take annual leave and increasing training hours.
Huga is yet another technology firm that has encouraged employees to schedule annual leave or enroll in training programs amid declining orders after the nation’s two top flat-panel makers, Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子) and AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), made similar moves earlier this week.
Founded in 1998, Huga rolled out its first LED chip in 2000 just as the global LED industry was taking off. The company saw tenfold growth between 2005 and 2007.
The company reported NT$104.06 million (US$3.43 million) in net losses during the first half of this year, reversing a net profit of NT$268.9 million a year earlier and translating into a net loss of NT$0.21 per share, company statistics showed.
Huga’s shares stayed flat at NT$14.8 yesterday, weaker than the TAIEX’s 0.14 percent gain, stock exchange data showed.
Meanwhile, MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s largest handset chip designer, is bucking the negative sentiment within the high-tech sector, as the company plans to recruit 300 software engineers in both Taiwan and China to meet product demand in the smartphone market, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday.
The newspaper, citing unnamed company officials, said MediaTek is targeting engineers in such fields as Android operating system, long term evolution (LTE) high-speed network, radio-frequency system, digital TV platform and 3D application programs.
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