Royal Philips Electronics announced that it has sold approximately 887 million shares of common stock in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. to long-term financial investors in Taiwan.
Through these transactions, the company has implemented the first step of the multi-phased plan to facilitate an orderly exit from its shareholding in TSMC, which was announced on March 9, 2007.
TSMC has its corporate headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading process technology and the foundry industry's largest portfolio of process-proven library, IP, design tools and reference flows. The company operates one advanced 300 mm wafer fab, five eight inch fabs and one six inch wafer fab. It also has substantial capacity commitments at its wholly owned subsidiary, WaferTech, and its joint venture fab, SSMC.
The sale of the shares will provide Philips with proceeds of approximately €1300 M, and will result in a non-taxable gain of approximately €725 M in the company’s financial results for the first quarter of 2007. Following this transaction, Philips currently holds approximately 3301 million shares in TSMC, reflecting a lowering of the company's holding in the company from 16.2 percent to 12.8 percent.
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