News

28 September 2006

 

Opto Tech and Epistar secure new orders for LEDs

Taiwan’s Opto Tech stands a strong change of securing orders for LEDs to be used in large-scale bulletin boards built along US highways, says a report from DigiTimes, quoting the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN). Currently, Opto Tech’s main business is fulfilling OEM orders for Nichia under a partnership agreement, but the report says that gross margin for the new orders would contribute almost 50% to the company.

According to DigiTimes, EDN cited Opto Tech as saying that demand for LED bulletin boards has been spurred on by the upcoming Beijing Olympics. In the US, LEDs are expected to begin penetrating highway bulletin boards from 2007.

In another report from DigiTimes, Opto Tech was said to have announced that its shareholders have approved a plan to reduce the company’s capital by around 19.7% to NT$1.53bn (about $46m), to amend its losses and strengthen its financial structure. Quoting from the Chinese-language Commercial Times, the report adds that the decision was due mainly to Opto Tech’s OLED segment losing NT$800m in 2005, according to the company’s VP, Eric C Guo. In July, Guo said the OLED segment had Q1 losses of NT$200m, but will break even by year-end.

Opto Tech had overall losses of NT$1.2bn in 2005, but turned profitable in Q1, 2006, reporting profits of NT$385m in H1, 2006, says the report.

DigiTimes also reported that Taiwan’s Epistar has completed a capital expansion of NT$2bn (US$60.67m) through a convertible-bond (CB) issue, with participants including two panel makers and two car vendors, again quoting the Chinese-language EDN.

The report said that Epistar has secured orders for high-luminance LED chips from unspecified panel makers; the LED chips will be used as a backlight source for notebook panels. Volume production for the orders is due to begin from Q1, 2007.

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