Epistar Corp’s (晶電) board of directors has approved plans to spin off its semiconductor foundry business into a separate wholly owned entity, the LED chip manufacturer said yesterday.
Epistar said that the new unit, which has yet to be named, would be allocated enterprise value of about NT$1 billion (US$32.89 million) from its parent.
Epistar would gain 100 million shares in the new unit issued at a premium of NT$10 per share and a par value of NT$5 per share, it said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
As the amount of shares to be gained has the same value as the new unit, its earnings per share and net asset value per share performance would not be affected by the spin-off, it said.
While key personnel changes would take effect on July 16, the plan is scheduled to be implemented on Oct. 1.
Epistar president M.J. Chou (周銘俊) is to step down to take over as president of the new unit, but will retain his seat on the Epistar board, while he will be replaced by vice president of sales and marketing Patrick Fan (范進雍), the company said.
The new foundry unit would focus on contract manufacturing of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers and gallium nitride chips, in a bid to diversify from the LED market, where Epistar has been facing stiff competition from Chinese rivals.
Epistar’s foundry unit has contributed annual sales of about NT$100 million to NT$200 million from the manufacturing of data communication chips, Chou said.
The new unit has begun negotiations with prospective customers, it is expected to ship out samples of 3D sensing chips in the final quarter of this year and report modest earnings before the end of next year, Chou said.
Epistar shareholders on Thursday approved the distribution of a cash dividend of NT$0.11 per common share by allocating the company’s capital surplus.
Sales in the first five months fell 14.89 percent annually to NT$8.63 billion, with sales last month dipping 18.07 percent from April to NT$1.81 billion.
Epistar shares yesterday gained 0.78 percent in Taipei trading to close at NT$39.
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
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making 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
RSS