Printed circuit board (PCB) maker HannStar Board Corp’s (瀚宇博德) decision to acquire a 24 percent stake in local peer Career Technology Co (嘉聯益) would positively affect its efforts to develop 5G-related products, Jih Sun Securities Investment Consulting Co (日盛投顧) said on Wednesday last week.
HannStar Board produces mostly rigid PCBs for PCs, Internet communications, set-top boxes, TVs, servers and gaming devices, but the company has less access in the market for handheld devices, such as mobile phones and tablets, Jih Sun said in a note.
“Its cooperation with Career Technology would help it broaden its market and expand PCB production from rigid boards to flexible boards, as well as helping the company in the development of 5G-related products amid a rapidly growing 5G market,” Jih Sun analyst Daniel Tsai (蔡志昇) said in the note.
The agreement with HannStar Board would help Career Technology, which is a major supplier of flexible PCBs for Apple Inc, to obtain the stable funding needed to develop its 5G business long-term, Tsai added.
“The cooperation would create a certain synergy between them,” he said.
The analyst’s remarks came the day after the companies announced their strategic move, which would see HannStar Board acquire a 24 percent stake in Career Technology through a private placement and a share swap, while Career Technology would acquire a 6.5 percent stake in HannStar Board.
Under the plan, HannStar Board would first acquire a 16 percent share in Career Technology at NT$28 per share via a private placement, and then swap shares with Career Technology at a 1-to-1.36 exchange ratio until it holds an 8 percent stake in its peer.
The private placement should be completed next month, while the share swap is subject to regulatory approval, company filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
HannStar Board shares on Friday closed at NT$36.1 in Taipei trading, down 5 percent from a week earlier, while Career Technology shares ended at NT$29.25, a decline of 14.47 percent from a week earlier.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
RSS