Micron Technology Inc yesterday agreed to close the NT$132.5 billion (US$4.19 billion) buyout of its Taiwanese DRAM manufacturing arm in early December, ending months-long speculation about a potential collapse of the deal.
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科), 33 percent owned by Micron, yesterday said its board has approved the deal with Micron’s local subsidiary Micron Memory Taiwan Co Ltd (台灣美光) at NT$30 per common share in cash.
Inotera is to be delisted from the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Dec. 6, after Micron wraps up the purchase of its remaining 67 percent stake in Inotera, the chipmaker said.
The transaction was originally scheduled to be closed in the middle of July, but Micron postponed the deal in June.
“Micron spent a little more time reviewing Inotera’s operations before reaching the agreement,” Inotera chairman Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) said at a news conference yesterday.
As part of the deal, Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), another Inotera major shareholder, agreed to sell its 24.2 percent stake in the firm to Micron for NT$47.6 billion and to spend NT$31.5 billion at most to subscribe to Micron stocks, or stocks and bonds via private placements, Lee said.
Lee is also the president of Nanya.
Micron is scheduled to set its price early next month, according to Lee.
With the investment, Nanya is likely to own as much as a 5.4 percent stake in Micron and to become the largest shareholder of Idaho-based memorychip maker Boise, based on Micron’s closing share price of US$17.5 on Monday.
The deal will also allow Nanya, the nation’s biggest DRAM chipmaker, to secure next-generation 10-nanometer technologies from the US memorychip maker, Lee said.
Lee said Samsung Electronics Co’s suspension of Note 7 production would not significantly reduce demand for mobile DRAM chips.
“I don’t see any impact at all so far,” Lee said.
Other smartphone vendors would replace Samsung’s role in supplying phones to consumers, he said.
Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) expects Apple Inc and China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為), Vivo Electronics Corp (維沃移動通信) and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動) to benefit from Samsung’s suspension of Note 7 sales and exchanges.
The Taipei-based researcher said the suspension of Note 7 production would not impact the price hikes of handset key components including DRAM chips, as Samsung’s competitors are set to increase supply.
Separately, Nanya yesterday said its revenue rose 1.18 percent to NT$3.5 billion last month from NT$3.46 billion in August as shipments and average selling prices rose slightly. Last month’s figure marked its highest level since January.
During last quarter, Nanya’s revenue expanded to NT$102.04 billion, a 10.42 percent increase from the second quarter’s NT$8.93 billion.
Inotera yesterday said revenue jumped 35.5 percent to NT$5.47 billion last month from NT$4.04 billion in August.
In the third quarter, the firm’s revenue surged 20.29 percent to NT$13.93 billion from NT$11.58 billion in the second quarter, it said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
BIG INVESTMENT: Hon Hai is building the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said The construction of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) massive artificial intelligence (AI) server plant near Guadalajara, Mexico, would be completed in a year despite the threat of new tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is investing about US$900 million in what would become the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art GB200 AI chips, Lemus said. The project consists of two phases: the expansion of an existing Hon Hai facility in the municipality of El Salto, and the construction of a