Food conglomerate Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業) intends to pursue 100 percent ownership of South Korean subsidiary Woongjin Foods Co through tender offers, the company said on Monday.
The company's board of directors approved a plan to acquire the remaining 20.68 percent stake in Woongjin Uni-President does not own to fully bring the South Korean food supplier under its corporate umbrella, it said in a statement.
Seeing the acquisition as a way to strengthen its sales and profitability, the conglomerate intends to spend 15.11 billion South Korean won (US$11.35 million) to acquire 6.57 million Woongjin shares, or a 10 percent stake in the company, from Monday to Feb. 23, it said.
Photo: Amy Yang, Taipei Times
The average share price of 2,300 won per share would represent a 91 percent premium over the 1,200 won the stock closed on Tuesday.
Once the acquisition of the initial 10 percent stake is completed, Uni-President will kick off the second phase of the plan to take 100 percent control of Woongjin, best known for its beverages, in particular teas and juices, it said.
In 2019, Uni-President acquired a 74.8 percent stake in Woongjin for US$229 million from private equity fund Hahn & Co and had since increased its holdings to 79.32 percent of the company's shares.
The acquisition of Woongjin's outstanding shares reflects the ambition of Uni-President Group chairman Alex Lo (羅智先), who wants to further extend the company's reach into Northeast Asia and establish a cross-Asia distribution platform, analysts said.
Uni-President began diversifying its business regionally in 2019 when it entered China's market by setting up an instant noodle production site in Beijing.
It then teamed up with Japanese partners to roll out food products in Southeast Asian markets, and has also set up production and operating hubs in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia.
In addition to food supplies, Uni-President has broadened its product portfolio by stepping into logistics, biotechnology, health and beauty retail, and department store operations.
Last year, the conglomerate acquired the 60 percent share of Carrefour Taiwan held by its French parent company to gain full ownership of the retail brand's operations in Taiwan.
In the Philippines, the conglomerate operates the 7-Eleven convenience store chain as it does in Taiwan.
Lo has said his goal is for Uni-President's annual sales to hit NT$700 billion (US$22.36 billion).
Last year, Uni-President had consolidated sales of NT $580.99 billion, up 10.74 percent from a year earlier.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
RSS