| San Francisco/Taipei (May 26, 2005) - Walden International is pleased to announce the successful initial public offering of one of its portfolio companies, Taiwan Chi Cheng Enterprise Co., Ltd. (“Taiwan Chi Cheng”). Taiwan Chi Cheng shares began trading on May 26, 2005 on the TAISDAQ. A total of 1.1 billion shares were offered at NT$36 (US$1.15) per share to the public and underwriters, raising approximately NT$4 billion (US$127 million) for existing shareholders. Barits Securities Corporation underwrote the public offering.
Taiwan Chi Cheng was founded in June 1973 to focus on the design and manufacturing of precision metal stamping parts, plastic injection parts, insert molding parts and assembly parts for digital cameras, mobile phones, PC peripherals and other consumer electronics products. The Company has been offering excellent parts manufacturing services in terms of quality, delivery and cost to its customers and has established a very stable, close and long-term relationship and partnership with world-class customers such as Canon, Fujifilm, Kodak, Lucent, Motorola, Siemens and SONY. Taiwan Chi Cheng is headquartered in Chung-Ho City, Taipei County with 11 production facilities located in China, Germany, Japan and Malaysia and 5 sales offices in Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the U.S. The Company currently has over 4,019 employees.
In fiscal year 2004, Taiwan Chi Cheng achieved a net profit of NT$390 million (US$12 million) on a revenue of NT$1.7 billion (US$32 million), a 175% growth in net profit and a 21% growth in revenue compared to (that of) fiscal year 2003. The substantial increase of net profit over the previous year was mainly contributed by the increase of sales weighting of the major gross profit contributor, i.e. aluminum cases for digital camera, mobile phone, PDA and other consumer electronics products.
In order to further expand its business scope, Taiwan Chi Cheng plans to penetrate the automotive component market as its next target and recently established a joint-venture with Geissler in Munich, Germany. The facility in Europe is responsible for manufacturing connector parts for automobiles with major customers including DELPHI, FCI and KOSTAL. Taiwan Chi Cheng is optimistic about the explosive market growth potential of automotive components in China and plans to start providing anodic surface treatment services at its Kuenshan plant in China in 2006 to serve local customers.
Walden International has been an investor of Taiwan Chi Cheng since May 1998. At present, Walden International holds approximately 15 million shares in Taiwan Chi Cheng, approximately 15.43% of the Company’s outstanding shares.
|
