Teco Electric and Machinery Co Ltd (東元電機) has signed an agreement to acquire Malaysia’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) engineering company NCL Energy Sdn Bhd, as the Taiwanese industrial motor manufacturer pursues booming opportunities in the Southeast Asian country’s data center and renewable energy markets.
Teco plans to acquire an 80 percent stake in NCL, becoming its largest shareholder, the company said in a statement yesterday.
Together with a proposed investment in NCL’s renewable energy subsidiary, NCL Green Energy Sdn Bhd, the deal would total up to 70 million ringgit (US$15.8 million), Teco said.
Photo courtesy of Teco Electric & Machinery Co
The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of this year, the company said.
Teco’s board of directors approved the acquisition and investment plans on Friday last week, and the company held a signing ceremony in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
“With its low electricity costs, vast land availability and strategic location near Singapore, Malaysia has attracted significant investment in data center construction, making it the country with the highest number of new data centers in Southeast Asia,” Teco chairman Morris Li (利明献) said in the statement.
Entering Malaysia’s data center MEP engineering market is just the first step, as Teco plans to expand into solar power plant, battery energy storage system, electric vehicle charging and MEP equipment sales to seize growing market opportunities there, he said.
NCL has been engaged in MEP and solar engineering in Malaysia for nearly 20 years, Teco said.
Teco has also established a strong working relationship with NCL on two hyperscale data center projects recently, the company added.
Malaysia is gearing up to become a major player in the global semiconductor industry after signing a major deal with UK chip giant Arm Holdings PLC on March 5, aiming to move into more value-added production, such as chip fabrication and integrated circuit (IC) design, from back-end IC packaging in the next five to seven years.
In addition, Malaysia has attracted sizeable investments from global tech giants such as Google, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services Inc and Oracle Corp in the data center area, as the country looks to position itself as Southeast Asia’s data center hub in the next few years.
Against this backdrop, the NCL deal aligns with Teco’s strategy of increasing overseas revenue to more than 50 percent within the next two to three years by targeting Southeast Asia’s high-growth potential markets, the company said.
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
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
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
NOT JUSTIFIED: The bank’s governor said there would only be a rate cut if inflation falls below 1.5% and economic conditions deteriorate, which have not been detected The central bank yesterday kept its key interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive quarter, aligning with market expectations, while slightly lowering its inflation outlook amid signs of cooling price pressures. The move came after the US Federal Reserve held rates steady overnight, despite pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut borrowing costs. Central bank board members unanimously voted to maintain the discount rate at 2 percent, the secured loan rate at 2.375 percent and the overnight lending rate at 4.25 percent. “We consider the policy decision appropriate, although it suggests tightening leaning after factoring in slackening inflation and stable GDP growth,”
RSS