King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電子) has purchased facilities and equipment from Xuan Tong System Integration Co (玄通系統工程) for NT$1.05 billion (US$32.9 million) as the company seeks to expand its IC testing capacity, it said on Friday.
The company has also spent just less than NT$500 million to acquire 15 land parcels in Miaoli County’s Jhunan Township (竹南) totaling 22,372.06 square meters for future business needs, it said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The deals come as King Yuan is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) chip testing capacity at its plant in Miaoli’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) to meet the needs of Nvidia Corp and other customers.
Photo courtesy of the Military News Agency via CNA
Founded in 1987, King Yuan provides front-end wafer testing and back-end IC product testing services, as well as burn-in and packaging services.
The company operates plants in Tongluo and Jhunan townships in Miaoli County and Suzhou, China.
King Yuan’s specialty is in providing customized test solutions for customers, which include Nvidia, MediaTek Inc (聯發科), Broadcom Inc and Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
For this reason, the company uses a self-made tester to test mixed-signal, power management, radio frequency and other chip modules, and has further expanded to high-speed test modules, such as MEMS sensors and CMOS modules.
The company also said on Friday that it has raised its Chinese subsidiary King Long Technology (Suzhou) Ltd’s (京隆科技) capital expenditure to 1.392 billion yuan from 738 million yuan (US$196.2 million from US$104 million), an increase of 88.5 percent, as it prepares for operational and capacity expansion needs.
The move follows the company’s decision to increase its capital expenditure in Taiwan this year to NT$13.8 billion from NT$12.3 billion, of which 40 percent would be used to construct cleanrooms and plants in Tongluo and Jhunan, while the remaining 60 percent would be used for testing equipment procurement and machine upgrades.
In the first half of this year, King Yuan reported revenue of NT$12.52 billion, up 9.73 percent from NT$11.41 billion in the same period a year earlier, while net profit rose 19.69 percent to NT$3.27 billion from NT$2.73 billion, with earnings per share of NT$2.68.
The company expects revenue to grow 5 percent to 7 percent this quarter from NT$6.54 billion last quarter.
It also expects an increase of at least 10 percent in full-year revenue this year given stronger-than-expected AI demand, it said.
Gross margin this year is also expected to continue expanding amid rising factory use after posting 34.18 percent in the first half of this year, it added.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
RSS