Local semiconductor firm GCS Holdings Inc (環宇通訊) yesterday said its board has dropped a US$226 million deal to sell itself to China’s Sanan Optoelectronics Co (三安光電) after US regulatory authorities blocked the transaction.
Instead, GCS signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese LED chipmaker to form a new joint venture, with the aim of building a 6-inch wafer plant.
GCS said it has been seeking partners to build advanced chip capacities over the past year in order to explore new business opportunities and to diversify its product portfolios.
The joint venture is to help the firm reach this goal, it said.
“The new joint venture will make chips, such as radio frequency ICs [integrated circuits] and power management ICs used in consumer electronics and mobile devices,” GCS said in a statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Radio frequency ICs made up 34 percent of the firm’s total revenue of NT$464 million (US$14.66 million) in the first quarter of this year.
As discussions are still in the initial stages, GCS said it does not yet have financial details, such as the new firm’s share capital and how many shares each side will hold.
GCS said its board yesterday approved scrapping the acquisition, as the deal was rejected by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) due to unspecified concerns.
Since the deal was announced in March, speculation had arisen that Sanan’s takeover bid would face close scrutiny by CFIUS, because some GCS products with military applications are shipped to clients in the US.
GCS did not comment on the issue.
The company said it has signed an agreement to terminate the deal with Sanan’s fully-owned investment arm, SAIC Acquisition Inc.
SAIC originally planned to buy all 58 million shares of GCS.
GCS, registered in the Cayman Islands, offers foundry services for gallium arsenide-based and gallium nitride-based radio frequency ICs, wireless devices, power electronics and optoelectronics, in addition to gallium arsenide-based optical wafers and chips.
Trading of GCS shares has been suspended due to the cancelation of the deal.
The company is scheduled to release quarterly earnings at an investors’ conference today.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS