Cica-Huntek Chemical Technology Taiwan Co (矽科宏晟), a major chemical dispense system supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), said in a regulatory filing yesterday that it is to inject US$123 million capital into its US subsidiary for long-term investment purposes.
The company specializes in installing chemical dispense systems for advanced chip manufacturing fabs, including 3-nanometer and 5-nanometer fabs, as well as advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate packaging fabs. It established the US subsidiary, Cica-Huntek Chemical Technology USA Corp, in April 2021.
The company’s board of directors approved the latest investment yesterday, and it came three months after TSMC said it would double down on its US investment of US$165 billion.
Photo courtesy of Cica-Huntek Chemical Technology Taiwan Co
Cica-Huntek Chemical president Alex Ko (柯燦塗) in May said that the firm was asked to deploy its teams in the US, as its key customer plans to build multiple fabs there.
The company operates an office in Kumamoto, Japan, and a Singaporean office to provide on-site services, as well as two Chinese sites. It is evaluating the feasibility of setting up a European unit in Germany or the Czech Republic, it said.
The company counts TSMC, Micron Technology Inc and Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) among its customers.
INVESTOR RESILIENCE? An analyst said that despite near-term pressures, foreign investors tend to view NT dollar strength as a positive signal for valuation multiples Morgan Stanley has flagged a potential 10 percent revenue decline for Taiwan’s tech hardware sector this year, as a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar begins to dent the earnings power of major exporters. In what appears to be the first such warning from a major foreign brokerage, the US investment bank said the currency’s strength — fueled by foreign capital inflows and expectations of US interest rate cuts — is compressing profit margins for manufacturers with heavy exposure to US dollar-denominated revenues. The local currency has surged about 10 percent against the greenback over the past quarter and yesterday breached
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