Chipbond Technology Corp (頎邦) yesterday said it plans to acquire about a 31 percent stake in Orient Semiconductor Electronics Ltd (華泰電子) in a cash-and-share deal, aiming to make inroads into flash memory-chip packaging.
Chipbond said the strategic alliance would open the door for the company to enter the flash memorychip packaging and testing market, which is a new business for the Hsinchu-based company. Chipbond primarily provides testing and packaging services for driver integrated circuits that are used in flat panels.
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Photo: CNA
“Except for flash memory chips, we also saw a lot of new businesses that require the technologies of Chipbond or Oriental Semiconductor,” Chipbond chairman Wu Fei-jain (吳非艱) told a media briefing at the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Orient Semiconductor’s existing shareholders, including flash memory controller supplier Phison Electronics Corp (群聯電子) and memory module maker Kingston Solutions Inc (金士頓科技), are also potential clients for the new venture, Wu said.
The partnership between the two firms would create a win-win situation as Chipbond’s customers, products and client portfolios are complementary to those of Oriental Semiconductor, Wu said.
He expects the synergy to take place in the second half of next year.
BIG SPENDING
Chipbond plans to spend NT$820.4 million (US$28.31 million) on buying 12.71 percent of Orient Semiconductor shares from the manufacturer’s mayor shareholders.
Each share is priced at NT$11.59, representing a discount of 1.78 percent compared with Oriental Semiconductor’s closing price of NT$11.8 yesterday.
It also plans to subscribe to 300 million special shares to be issued by Oriental Semiconductor, Chipbond said.
Oriental Semiconductor provides manufacturing services and chip packaging services for flash memory chip makers and flash memory controller suppliers.
SMOOTH DEAL
Wu said that the talks went smoothly and were wrapped up within just two months.
Oriental Semiconductor said the deal would help significantly alleviate its financial burden.
The company lost NT$266 million in the first half of this year, or losses per share of NT$0.48.
Chipbond earned NT$1.63 billion, or NT$2.5 per share, in net profit during the first half of this year.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts