The spinoff is expected to deal the biggest blow to contract PC manufacturer Inventec, whose business is concentrated on HP products. It is expected HP will contribute 30 to 40 percent of Inventec's sales for this year and next. Inventec at the same time is the supplier of HP's tablet PC, which HP plans to stop making. These factors caused Inventec to close at its daily low of NT$11.1 yesterday.
Quanta Inc., HP's biggest contract manufacturer, gets about 40 percent of total orders released by HP, which contributes to 25 percent of the firm's sales. Quanta yesterday closed down 2.55 percent to NT$53.5.
Wistron, whose biggest growth dynamics for next year will be HP orders, closed at its daily low of NT$34.1.
HP competitors Acer and Asus, on the other hand, rose by 4.68 percent and 3.98 percent, respectively, on expectations competition will lessen in the market.
Pan-Samsung shares, nevertheless, gave better performances on reports the firm may be one of the three likely purchasers of HP's PC unit. The other two were Lenovo and Huawei.
Among Taiwan firms doing business with Samsung, Epistar rose 4.89 percent, Novatek 1.78 percent, Everlight 1.38 percent and Realtek 0.37 percent.
Chin Wen-heng, analyst with Goldman Sachs, listed three possible scenarios for HP's PC spinoff: a lack of buyers to purchase the unit, the purchase of the unit by Samsung, and the purchase of the unit by either Lenovo or Huawei.
For the first scenario, which will keep the PC unit under HP, its impact on the industry will be minimal, Chin said.
Selling the unit to Lenovo would benefit the firm's Taiwan original equipment manufacturers, namely Wistron and Compal, and hurt HP clients Hon Hai, Quanta and Inventec.
According to Chin, Taiwan manufacturers would hurt the most if HP sold the business to Samsung, which already has its own panel, memory chip and IC businesses that can supply the products directly to the new PC arm. This will take away a huge chunk of business from Taiwan IT manufacturers.
Source: chinapost
