April 6th (PCB UNION)- Tripod (3044-TW), an Apple PCB supplier, has acquired a Japanese PCB factory located in the KCN Bien Hoa, Dong Nai Province, Vietnam for a purchase price of only $1. This marks Tripod's first expansion beyond China and with a monthly production capacity of ten million square feet of PCBs.

After the completion of the equity transfer process for this acquisition, Tripod nominates Mr. Lü Zhengming, Vice General Manager of Tripod's Wuxi Factory in China, to take charge of it and plans to invest NT$100-200 million (approximately USD 3.28-6.55 million) in process improvement with an anticipated emphasis on multi-layer PCBs including server boards.

The acquisition of the Japanese PCB factory in Vietnam is in response to customer demands for increasing production diversification outside of mainland China and Taiwan. It is apparent that PCB companies in Taiwan will increase investment in Southeast Asia for customer's diversity demands. while the Japanese PCB factory has a limited existing production capacity of approximately 1000 employees focused on low-end automotive and consumer electronic PCBs.

Following the acquisition by Tripod, it is anticipated that the monthly revenue will increase to a maximum of NT$100-200 million (approximately USD 3.28-6.55 million).

In 2022, Tripod's revenue is NT$65.784 billion (approximately USD 2.2 billion) with a gross profit margin of 17.95%. The focus of Tripod's PCB applications includes memory modules, hard drives, laptops, optoelectronics, smartphones, servers, and automobiles. 

As suppliers of PCB boards to Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi, Tripod operates production bases in Taiwan, Jiangsu, and Hubei. Tripod primarily distributes its products to domestic market and overseas markets, including the Mainland China, Korea, Malaysia and other countries.