Taiwan's largest consumer IC design company, Sunplus Technology, will price a 17.5 million unit issue later today Thursday, while notebook manufacturer Compal Electronics is scheduled to decide whether to follow up pre-marketing with the formal launch of a 170 million share offering.
Few would deny that the primary market for straight equity offerings is anything but tough and particularly for tech companies. Difficulties predicting the bottom of the tech cycle, poor visibility in the supply chain for manufacturers and high volatility on the Nasdaq and Taiwan Stock Exchange, have all led investors to demand high discounts to par from prospective issuers. As a result, most of last year's lengthy Taiwanese pipeline have...
