Contract electronics maker Inventec Corp (英業達) is laying off employees at its all-in-one (AIO) computer subsidiary TPV-Inventa Technology Co Ltd (英冠達) and plans to close the subsidiary next year at the earliest, following a drastic decline in orders, a company executive confirmed yesterday.
“We are downsizing at TPV-Inventa and moving all of its operations to Inventec,” Inventec spokesman Yu Chin-pao (游進寶) said by telephone.
Yu’s remarks came after the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported that Inventec is laying off 39 of its 59 remaining staff at TPV-Inventa before the end of this year, leaving only 20 employees at the unit’s financial department to settle the company’s accounts.
The report quoted a former employee, who was recently dismissed by the company, as saying that TPV-Inventa had more than 300 employees at the beginning of last year, but Inventec reallocated 60 of the firm’s headcount to other business units and began laying off workers in the second half of last year.
Inventec dismissed one or two employees at a time and waited for weeks to continue scaling down its head count in an attempt to avoid having to report to labor authorities about a mass layoff, the report said.
Yu declined to disclose the actual number of employees who had left the company, but confirmed that the layoffs were staggered over the past year.
The company plans to dissolve and liquidate TPV-Inventa after resources and employee reallocation is completed, Yu said.
Established in 2000 with a paid-in capital of NT$1.25 billion (US$39.23 million), TPV-Inventa was a joint venture of Inventec and TPV Technology Group (冠捷科技).
Its clients include Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), HP Inc and Dell Inc.
The decision came as a surprise, because it followed a cash injection of US$22 million by Inventec in September last year to increase its shareholding in the AIO subsidiary, while TPV left the joint venture’s board.
TPV-Inventa’s AIO business contributed about 2 percent, or NT$2.23 billion, to Inventec’s consolidated revenue of NT$111.63 billion last quarter, according to company statistics.
However, with its business continuing to fall, “TPV-Inventa is not likely to turn profitable this year,” Yu said, declining to disclose the amount of losses at the subsidiary.
Industry sources told the Taipei Times that TPV-Inventa lost a significant number of AIO PC orders from Lenovo this year, after the Chinese company reallocated orders for 1.2 million units to Asia Vital Components Co Ltd (奇鋐) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶).
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
RSS