Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s second-largest telecom, yesterday said it would acquire Taiwan Star Telecom Corp (台灣之星), the nation’s fourth-largest carrier, as the company aims to expand its customer base, and boost efficiency and competitiveness in the local market.
Taiwan Mobile aims to enlarge its spectrum of resources for greater economies of scale, the telecom said.
It also looks to achieve earnings and net-worth growth, as well as better customer satisfaction, the company said.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan Mobile, which had 7.11 million users as of the end of September, and Taiwan Star, which had 2.65 million users, would have a combined customer base of 9.76 million, the companies told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
That would be higher than the 9.12 million users Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) and Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) have through a business partnership, the firms said.
Its combined customer base would come close to the 10.65 million users of Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s largest telecom, they said.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan Mobile said it is planning to issue 282.222 million new common shares that would be given to Taiwan Star shareholders in exchange for their shares.
The exchange ratio would be one Taiwan Star share for 0.04508 of its own shares, Taiwan Mobile said, adding that its calculations were based on Taiwan Star’s stock price as of June 30, expected merger synergies and comparable companies’ price-to-book ratios.
Taiwan Star would be dissolved after the merger, the companies said.
The deal is subject to approvals from a Taiwan Star shareholders’ meeting and regulatory authorities, they said.
The firms aim to complete the deal by Sept. 30 next year, but no later than Dec. 31, with the option of extensions if both parties agree, they said.
With the addition of Taiwan Star’s 5G licenses, Taiwan Mobile would own 100 megahertz of the 3.5 gigahertz frequency band, which would help speed up its promotion of 5G services to corporate clients, Taiwan Mobile president Jamie Lin (林之晨) said.
After the merger, Taiwan Mobile would terminate its 3G network and thousands of 4G base stations to avoid overlapping resources, which would help save significant amounts of energy, Lin said.
Taiwan Mobile would respect all contracts customers signed with Taiwan Star and hopes to gain support from regulators, he said.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
RSS