SHARP Corp may sell a TV factory to Lenovo Group Ltd as the cash-strapped Japanese giant seeks to bolster its finances while it also plans to form a sales venture with China's biggest personal computer maker, media reported said yesterday.
Sharp is in final talks on selling the Chinese plant in Nanjing and possibly also additional plants in Malaysia to raise 30 billion yen (US$339 million), the Nikkei newspaper reported, without citing any sources.
Sharp and Lenovo declined to comment yesterday.
Lenovo's "PC Plus" strategy seeks to expand into the TV segment in the consumer electronics industry, a Lenovo source, who declined to be named, said yesterday.
Acquisitions are "a good tool to drive the growth and building of capability," Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo's chairman, said during a recent interview. Other Lenovo acquisitions have included IBM's PC unit, NEC and German-based Medion.
Loss-making Sharp also said it was seeking to raise capital. The company is short of capital to upgrade factories and technologies to compete with Samsung and LG in the liquid crystal display panel industry. Sharp has cooperated with Hong Hai and Qualcomm to co-invest in advanced LCD panel lines.
The global sales of LCD TVs may rise 7 percent last year to 220 million units from 2011, according to DisplaySearch, a US-based research firm.
Sharp headed to its highest close in about six months in Tokyo trading after the Nikkei reported the news yesterday. It fell 55 percent last year, the biggest fall among components in the Nikkei 225 Stock Average, according to Bloomberg News.
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