Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航) is to list its shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s Taiwan Innovation Board (TIB) in the third quarter of this year, the exchange said on Friday.
The budget carrier’s shares have been trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s Emerging Stock Board since December 2019.
Tigerair Taiwan was established in April 2014 as a joint venture between China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) and Singapore’s Tiger Airways Ltd, with CAL holding a 90 percent stake. In 2017, CAL acquired the remaining 10 percent from Tiger Airways to make Tigerair Taiwan its wholly owned subsidiary.
Photo courtesy of Tigerair Taiwan Ltd
CAL currently owns a 78.41 percent stake in Tigerair Taiwan, with Mandarin Airlines Ltd (華信航空), another CAL subsidiary, holding a 3.86 percent stake and Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) taking a 2.49 percent share, according to the budget carrier’s prospectus published last month.
Tigerair Taiwan, which has NT$4 billion (US$131.3 million) in paid-in capital, incurred a net loss of NT$2.85 billion last year, extending from a net loss of NT$2.27 billion a year earlier, while its sales rose to NT$1.31 billion from NT$244 million in 2021, the prospectus showed.
The airline offers flights to 25 destinations in the region. Its revenue accounts for 2.64 percent of the total revenue of Taiwan’s international carriers. EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) leads with 37.52 percent of overall revenue, followed by CAL with 25.62 percent and Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) with 5.73 percent.
CAL and EVA listed their shares on the local main board in 1993 and 2001 respectively, while StarLux listed its shares on the Emerging Stock Board in September last year.
Separately, the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday said that its board approved an application by Gogolook Inc (走著瞧), a trust tech services provider, to list its shares on the TIB in the third quarter.
The exchange launched the TIB in July 2021. It aims to encourage companies with key technologies and innovation capabilities to raise funds on capital markets, and “help companies achieve faster growth and sustainable development.”
According to the rules governing TIB listings, profitability is no longer the main listing standard.
The board would inject capital into the innovation ecosystem, build new financing sources, highlight the value of start-ups and foster the virtuous cycle of economic development, the exchange has said.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
DIVIDED VIEWS: Although the Fed agreed on holding rates steady, some officials see no rate cuts for this year, while 10 policymakers foresee two or more cuts There are a lot of unknowns about the outlook for the economy and interest rates, but US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at least one thing seems certain: Higher prices are coming. Fed policymakers voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, as they await clarity on whether tariffs would leave a one-time or more lasting mark on inflation. Powell said it is still unclear how much of the bill would fall on the shoulders of consumers, but he expects to learn more about tariffs
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market