Handset panel driver IC designer Ili Technology Corp (奕力) yesterday announced that its board has approved an acquisition by a subsidiary of MStar Semiconductor Inc (晨星半導體).
The company is to be acquired at NT$51 per share, representing a 15.52 percent premium to its closing price of NT$44.15 yesterday in Taipei trading.
The estimated NT$3.67 billion (US$112 million) deal is expected to be completed before the end of the second quarter next year, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) analyst Steve Huang (黃柏璁) said in a research note that Ili Technology is likely to benefit from its buyer’s abundant resources, which could aid in developing new full high-definition and touch display driver integration (TDDI) solutions.
MStar itself was acquired by MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s leading fabless chip designer, last year. Therefore, the latest deal is likely to allow MediaTek to obtain Ili Technology’s portfolio of intellectual property and enable Goodix Technology Inc (匯頂科技), MediaTek’s touch IC subsidiary, to develop emerging TDDI products, Huang said.
Huang said he expects consolidation in the handset display driver industry to continue and that players such as Synaptics Inc, Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠) and Himax Technologies Inc (奇景光電) in the high-end market and FocalTech Systems Co Ltd (敦泰科技) and Sitronix Technology Co (矽創) in the low-end segment might see their investment sentiment rise as they come into the sights of prospective buyers.
However, other analysts said yesterday’s deal could negatively impact other handset display driver vendors, such as FocalTech, Himax and Novatek, depending on the amount of resources MediaTek allocates to Ili Technology.
The deal might have negligible effects on financial metrics, such as price to earnings ratio, for MediaTek, according to Yuanta’s estimate.
However, from a product and sales perspective, the acquisition is not expected to yield tangible synergistic upsides from a more integrated supply chain for MediaTek, as Ili Technology’s clients are panel makers, while the chip designer primarily ships to handset manufacturers, Yuanta analyst George Chang (張家麒) said.
Nevertheless, Chang said the rationale behind the acquisition might be that MediaTek wanted to prevent Ili Technology from falling into the hands of a Chinese rival amid mounting concern over the “red supply chain” across the Taiwan Strait.
Ili Technology shares have dropped 36.66 percent so far this year in Taipei trading and those of MediaTek have declined 50.32 percent over the same period, closing at NT$229.5 yesterday.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
RSS