Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) said it is negotiating a lower acquisition bid for Taiwan Star Telecom Corp (台灣之星), as the regulator’s ruling last month curtailed Taiwan Mobile’s access to the 5G spectrum owned by Taiwan Star.
Taiwan Mobile seeks to slash about 72 percent of its offering to absorb financially strapped Taiwan Star through a share swap.
Taiwan Mobile’s board of directors yesterday approved an exchange of one Taiwan Star share per 0.0326 Taiwan Mobile shares, compared with 0.04508 shares agreed in December 2021, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange last night.
Photo: CNA
That proposal would significantly reduce the transaction to about NT$19.72 billion (US$647 million), based on Taiwan Mobile’s share price of NT$96.6, rather than NT$27.23 billion as calculated previously.
Taiwan Mobile said its board of directors met yesterday, but it declined to comment on the adjustment in the share swap ratio earlier yesterday.
“We are renegotiating for new terms,” Taiwan Mobile president Jamie Lin (林之晨) told an investors’ conference yesterday afternoon. “We hope we will have news to share very soon.”
Taiwan Mobile’s latest move came after the National Communications Commission gave conditional approval for the merger last month.
Taiwan Mobile is required to return 10 megahertz (MHz) of the 5G spectrum in the 1 gigahertz (GHz) band owned by Taiwan Star by June 30 next year for free, if it proceeds with the acquisition.
The commission’s decision is based on the Regulations for Administration of Mobile Broadband Businesses (行動寬頻業務管理規則), which set an upper limit of 5G spectrum acquisition of one-third — or 50MHz — of the total, or of the total auction spectrum of 150MHz.
Taiwan Mobile expects its revenue to grow this year, without counting the contribution from Taiwan Star, Lin said.
Revenue expanded 10 percent year-on-year to NT$172.21 billion, setting an all-time high, it said.
The telecom attributed the growth to a significant increase in monthly fees from 5G subscribers versus 4G users, and robust growth in its e-commerce and home broadband businesses.
Net profits were little changed, totaling NT$11.03 billion, increasing from NT$10.99 billion in 2021. Earnings per share increased slightly to NT$3.91 per share last year from NT$3.9 in 2021, it said.
Taiwan Mobile said it plans to boost capital spending this year to NT$12.8 billion, from NT$9.63 billion last year.
The increases are mainly due to the expansion of a logistics center for its e-commerce subsidiary Momo.com Inc (富邦媒體), it said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS