PCL Technologies Inc’s (眾達科技) board approved setting up a joint venture in Malaysia with Inari Amertron Bhd, the Taiwanese optical transceiver module maker said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday last week.
The joint venture, with an initial capitalization of US$5 million, is to manufacture optical transceiver and related products in Malaysia, with PCL contributing 70 percent, or US$3.5 million, of the total, while Inari holds the remaining 30 percent stake, the filing said.
The company said the investment is made in response to the US-China trade war and is in line with its medium and long-term development needs.
No details about production capacity or the timing for volume production were available.
PCL is the world’s largest maker of 16-gigabit small form-factor pluggable (SFP) optical transceiver modules, as well as one of the two 32G product suppliers globally. The Taipei-based company counts Foxconn Optical Interconnect Technology (鴻騰光電), Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and NEC Corp among its major clients.
PCL reported revenue of NT$1.56 billion (US$50.2 million) in the first eight months of this year, up 22.45 percent from the same period a year earlier, company data showed.
Net income for the first half of the year totaled NT$136.79 million, down from NT$140.95 million a year earlier, with earnings per share of NT$2.22, the company reported.
Inari Amertron, established in 2010, is involved in the outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) as well as electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industries.
In its filing with Bursa Malaysia on Wednesday, the company said the joint venture is to carry out business operations at its Plant 34 in Malaysia’s Penang State or other plants owned by the Inari Group.
Analysts said the impact of the US-China trade tensions could be a motive behind this partnership after optical transceiver modules were added to the latest US tariff list that took effect on Sept. 1.
PCL closed 1.15 percent higher at NT$88 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday. The company’s stock has risen 6.28 percent for the year to date.
Three experts in the high technology industry have said that US President Donald Trump’s pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors is part of an effort to force Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to the negotiating table. In a speech to Republicans on Jan. 27, Trump said he intends to impose tariffs on Taiwan to bring chip production to the US. “The incentive is going to be they’re not going to want to pay a 25, 50 or even a 100 percent tax,” he said. Darson Chiu (邱達生), an economics professor at Taichung-based Tunghai University and director-general of
‘LEGACY CHIPS’: Chinese companies have dramatically increased mature chip production capacity, but the West’s drive for secure supply chains offers a lifeline for Taiwan When Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) entered a deal with the eastern Chinese city of Hefei in 2015 to set up a new chip foundry, it hoped the move would help provide better access to the promising Chinese market. However, nine years later, that Chinese foundry, Nexchip Semiconductor Corp (合晶集成), has become one of its biggest rivals in the legacy chip space, leveraging steep discounts after Beijing’s localization call forced Powerchip to give up the once-lucrative business making integrated circuits for Chinese flat panels. Nexchip is among Chinese foundries quickly winning market share in the crucial US$56.3 billion industry of so-called legacy
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) is reportedly making another pass at Nissan Motor Co, as the Japanese automaker's tie-up with Honda Motor Co falls apart. Nissan shares rose as much as 6 percent after Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported that Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) instructed former Nissan executive Jun Seki to connect with French carmaker Renault SA, which holds about 36 percent of Nissan’s stock. Hon Hai, the Taiwanese iPhone-maker also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), was exploring an investment or buyout of Nissan last year, but backed off in December after the Japanese carmaker penned a deal
WASHINGTON POLICY: Tariffs of 10 percent or more and other new costs are tipped to hit shipments of small parcels, cutting export growth by 1.3 percentage points The decision by US President Donald Trump to ban Chinese companies from using a US tariff loophole would hit tens of billions of dollars of trade and reduce China’s economic growth this year, according to new estimates by economists at Nomura Holdings Inc. According to Nomura’s estimates, last year companies such as Shein (希音) and PDD Holdings Inc’s (拼多多控股) Temu shipped US$46 billion of small parcels to the US to take advantage of the rule that allows items with a declared value under US$800 to enter the US tariff-free. Tariffs of 10 percent or more and other new costs would slash such