TUTORING SERVICES
Bexcellent up 34% on IPO
Shares of Bexcellent Group Holdings Ltd (精英匯集團控股), whose top tutor earns more than HK$40 million (US$5.1 million) a year, yesterday surged as much as 34 percent on their first day of trading in Hong Kong. The provider of tutoring services to Hong Kong secondary-school students was so popular that individual investors placed orders for about 289 times the stock initially available to them. Bexcellent raised HK$135 million in its initial public offering (IPO) after pricing the shares near the top of a marketed range. This was in contrast to Xiaomi Corp (小米), which two weeks ago priced its IPO at the low end. Bexcellent shares closed at HK$1.32, a 22 percent gain from the IPO price of HK$1.08.
RANKINGS
Largan tops Asia300 list
Smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) topped Nikkei’s Asia300 list of the 325 fastest-growing and most valuable companies in the region, excluding Japan. The Nikkei Asian Review, which produced the list, said it used five criteria to determine the ranking: average revenue and net profit growth, return on equity, net profit margin and the ratio of shareholder equity to total assets over the past five years. India’s TCL Technologies Holding Ltd came in second, ahead of Indonesian property developer Bumi Serpong Damai, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) tied with Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) in fourth place, Nikkei said.
PLASTICS
FPC executive out on bail
Taipei prosecutors yesterday released former high-ranking Formosa Plastics Corp (FPC, 台塑) executive Lee Sun-ju (李孫儒) on NT$5 million (US$163,634) bail as he faces allegations of receiving tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars in kickbacks from the firm’s suppliers. Lee was questioned yesterday at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for suspected contraventions of the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法). He was in charge of procurement in his role as deputy general manager of the information technology department.
TRADE
TAITRA official upbeat
Taiwan has spent the past few years diversifying its export markets and promoting industrial transformation, which should help minimize the effects of the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China, a Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) official said on Thursday. “Even if the US-China trade war drags on, Taiwan must be prepared, but not panic,” TAITRA vice chairman Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠) said at a seminar sponsored by the Stimson Center on the impact of the trade dispute. TAITRA contacted China-based Taiwanese businesses before the trade dispute began and several forecast that it would take three to six months to gauge its impact, Liu said. “Taiwan will unavoidably be affected if the US-China trade war develops into a long drawn-out affair,” Liu said.
INVESTMENT
Green loans, bonds surge
As of the end of May, domestic banks’ total outstanding loans to the green energy sector stood at NT$1.089 trillion, while insurance companies’ investment in power plants using renewable energy sources reached NT$7.48 billion, Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed. In addition, NT$41.8 billion of green bonds were sold in Taiwan. The numbers were up by NT$44.2 billion, NT$2.13 billion and NT$21.2 billion respectively from the levels recorded at the end of last year.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
A TAIWAN DEAL: TSMC is in early talks to fully operate Intel’s US semiconductor factories in a deal first raised by Trump officials, but Intel’s interest is uncertain Broadcom Inc has had informal talks with its advisers about making a bid for Intel Corp’s chip-design and marketing business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Nothing has been submitted to Intel and Broadcom could decide not to pursue a deal, according to the Journal. Bloomberg News earlier reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is in early talks for a controlling stake in Intel’s factories at the request of officials at US President Donald Trump’s administration, as the president looks to boost US manufacturing and maintain the country’s leadership in critical technologies. Trump officials raised the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
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