Power and thermal management solutions provider Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) on Saturday said it would acquire US-based Universal Instruments Corp for US$88.9 million.
Taking over the precision automation solutions company would boost Delta’s smart manufacturing and industrial automation capabilities, and generate substantial research-and-development and customer base synergies, the Taipei-based firm said.
“Universal Instruments has a remarkable track record and long-lasting customer relationships in the electronics manufacturing field, which is a key focus of Delta’s industrial automation business,” Delta chief executive officer Cheng Ping (鄭平) said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Headquartered in Conklin, New York, Universal designs and manufactures automation and assembly equipment solutions for electronics manufacturers. The company has customers in a wide range of sectors, including automotive, computing, medical, industrial and printed circuit board surface mount placement.
It holds more than 500 patents and has since its founding in 1919 delivered nearly 30,000 systems to customers, Delta said.
After the acquisition is completed, Universal would continue to operate under its original management team, Delta said, adding that the acquisition would be finalized when the conditions stated in the purchase agreement have been met.
“By adding Universal’s precision automation machine offerings and leading technologies to our highly diversified industrial automation portfolio, we can offer customers total solutions capable of enhancing the productivity” and reducing the carbon footprint of their production lines, Cheng said.
Delta’s automation segment contributed 14 percent to the company’s total revenue in the third quarter of this year, down 8 percent from the previous quarter, but up 16 percent from the third quarter of last year to NT$11.28 billion, the company reported on Oct. 29.
The power electronics and infrastructure segments are the biggest drivers of Delta’s business, contributing 60 percent and 26 percent respectively to its revenue, company data showed.
The deal with Universal comes after Delta in November last year completed the acquisition of Trihedra Engineering Ltd, a Canadian software company focusing on supervisory control and data acquisition, as well as industrial Internet of Things applications.
Delta invested C$45 million (US$34.9 million at the current exchange rate) in Trihedra to broaden its industrial automation and system integration portfolio, it said at the time.
Capital Investment Management Corp (群益投顧) said that Delta has over the past few years been looking for merger and acquisition opportunities worldwide, a strategy that would help it gain traction in the US and European markets.
Delta’s industrial automation business is likely to benefit from trends in the US and Europe in the long run, Capital said in a note.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS