Elevator supplier Yungtay Engineering Co Ltd (永大) on Friday said that Japan’s Hitachi Group has proposed a tender offer to acquire the company’s common shares on the open market at NT$60 per share.
The public offer represented a premium of 16.28 percent compared with Yungtay’s closing price of NT$51.60 in Taipei trading.
The Taipei-based company said in a statement that it learned from Hitachi’s Web site that the Japanese firm plans to acquire 156,619,362 to 360,964,461 shares, the equivalent of about 38.32 to 88.32 percent of its issued and outstanding shares.
Yungtay’s honorary chairman Hsu Chou-li (許作立) has signed a contract with Hitachi saying that he will tender his 4.27 percent of shares after the proposed tender offer is filed and published, the firm said.
However, as Yungtay operates several subsidiaries in Shanghai, Tianjin and Sichuan Province in China, Hitachi would first need to obtain approval from Chinese authorities before initiating the offer, Yungtay said.
“If Hitachi is unable to obtain the merger clearance from the State Administration for Market Regulation of the People’s Republic of China, it will not proceed with the proposed tender offer,” Yungtay said in the statement.
Yungtay, established in 1966 with capital of NT$4.11 billion (US$132.6 million at the current exchange rate), is a leading elevator and escalator supplier in Taiwan and China, with 5,149 employees as of Dec. 31 last year.
It reported consolidated revenue of NT$16.75 billion last year, with operating profit of NT$1.48 billion and net profit of NT$1.13 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) were NT$2.76.
In the first nine months of this year, revenue was NT$11.44 billion, down 12.43 percent from the same period last year, while EPS hit NT$1.05 in the first half, compared with NT$1.74 a year earlier.
Hitachi has been a Yungtay partner for more than 50 years.
The Japanese group owns 11.7 percent of Yungtay’s shares — 7.8 percent of the shares are held by Hitachi Ltd and 3.9 percent by Hitachi Building Systems Co — and it intends to gain 100 percent ownership of the Taiwanese company with the offer, a statement posted on its Web site said.
The offer reflects the Japanese electronics conglomerate’s ambition to combine Yungtay’s cost competitiveness with Hitachi’s advanced technology to gain a solid footing in the global elevator and escalator market, the statement said.
“With the acquisition, Hitachi aims to enhance the elevator and escalator business in China and Asia by increasing the competitiveness of its products, and accelerating the global expansion of its product and service businesses,” it said.
Hitachi said it plans to proceed with the tender offer next year, with the completion of the deal subject to approvals from Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission, the Investment Commission and all other regulatory authorities.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the