Metal casing manufacturer Casetek Holdings Ltd (鎧勝控股) yesterday said it planned to issue 24 million new shares in its initial public offering (IPO) to raise NT$2.16 billion (US$74.39 million). Each share will be priced at NT$90, the company said.
Casetek, a subsidiary of Taiwanese notebook contract maker Pegatron Technology Corp (和碩), said it aims to use the funds to reallocate resources for its business expansion plans and maximize its operating efficiency.
Currently, Pegatron holds 74.39 percent of Casetek’s shares as its biggest shareholder and plans to reduce this percentage to less than 70 percent after the company’s shares are listed on the stock market.
Established in the Cayman Islands in 2010, Casetek now has NT$3.16 billion in capital and more than 35,000 employees throughout its subsidiaries, RiTeng Computer Accessory Co Ltd (日騰電腦) and AVY Precision Technology Inc (應華精密), which are located in Shanghai and Suzhou.
Casetek is a metal case manufacturer which designs products used for notebooks, desktop computers and tablets. Its major clients include renowned brands, such as Taiwan’s Acer Inc (宏碁) and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), US computer giants Dell Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) and Apple Inc, Japanese electronics maker Fujitsu Ltd and Toshiba Corp, and Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想).
“We forecast demand for aluminum alloy metal cases will remain robust until 2016, and both notebook and tablet brand companies will continue to place orders with us as we have a high capacity utilization rate of up to 80 percent,” Casetek chief executive officer Gary Chuang (莊育志) said in a pre-IPO investors’ conference yesterday.
For the first three quarters of last year, Casetek posted NT$21.33 billion in sales, with a gross margin of 21.08 percent, profit margin of 8.81 percent and earnings per share of NT$6.85.
“Excluding Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), we are the only company that is vertically integrated with notebook contract makers. Through its tight partnership with Pegatron, Casetek is able to obtain orders from Apple easily,” Chung said.
Chung added that Casetek manufactures about 100,000 units of metal casing for Apple’s iPad and iPad Mini tablets every day, using 5,500 of its computer numerical control metal band saw machines, and had shipped a total of 2.5 million units of iPad’s and iPad Mini’s metal cases in the fourth quarter of last year, driving up its overall annual sales to more than NT$25 billion.
Asked whether Casetek will manufacture metal cases designed for smartphones, particularly for Apple’s iPhone, Casetek chairman T.H. Tung (童子賢) said the company is expanding its business and adjusting its product mix.
“In the short term, the mobile device market is growing at a rapid pace, but it is hard to tell whether it will soon be saturated. We will take every possible situation into consideration,” Tung said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) investment project in Arizona has progressed better than expected, but it still faces challenges such as water and labor shortages, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Yeh Chun-hsien (葉俊顯) said yesterday. Speaking with reporters after visiting TSMC’s Arizona hub and attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Maryland last week, Yeh said TSMC’s Arizona site turned a profit of NT$16.14 billion (US$514 million) last year in its first full year of mass production. “TSMC told me it was surprised by the smooth trial run of the first fab, which has left the company optimistic about the project’s outlook,”
RSS