Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) board yesterday approved a proposal to issue unsecured corporate bonds in Taiwan for an amount not exceeding NT$45 billion (US$1.5 billion) to help expand production capacity, a company statement said.
The planned bond sale comes as the world’s largest contract chipmaker is stepping up capital spending on new technologies to safeguard its market leadership.
On April 26, TSMC announced an increase in capital spending for this year to a record US$8.5 billion after customers complained of a shortage of 28-nanometer chips used for mobile devices such as smartphones.
The bond issue follows last year’s sale of NT$18 billion in debt, which was TSMC’s first bond sale in nine years.
The company’s board yesterday approved other spending plans on advanced technology and research and development for this year, the statement said.
TSMC plans to spend US$3.18 billion to expand and upgrade its advanced technology capacity for 12-inch wafer fabs and equipment, and it plans to invest another US$233.2 million in research and development, the statement said.
On May 10, TSMC spokesperson Elizabeth Sun (孫又文) said the company planned to spend more than US$1 billion on research and development this year, after allocating US$1.12 billion to research and development last year.
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Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
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