Monday, March 14th 2022

MediaTek is Getting Ready to Spin off its Airoha Subsidiary

You'd be forgiven if you're not familiar with Airoha, as although the company has been around since 2001, it's been a company that has mostly been flying under the radar. Back in 2007, Mediatek became a majority shareholder by buying out Benq's stake in Airoha and a decade later, MediaTek merged some of its business units into Airoha, which is the opposite way to how it normally goes. MediaTek is getting ready to list Airoha on the Taiwanese stock market and this comes with several benefits to the company. Airoha's main product line is Bluetooth chips, but it also makes various solutions for GPS/GNSS, WiFi, DVB-S and xPON internet gateways and routers. Sony is one of its major customers, after the company switched from Qualcomm to MediaTek/Airoha a few years ago. Other customers are said to be Beats by Apple, JBL by Harman (which in turn is owned by Samsung), Skullcandy and Xiaomio.

The company is said to first be listed on Taiwan's Emerging Stock Market for at least six months—a requirement by Taiwanese law—before the company will be making a full IPO. The company is said to be valued at US$3.3 billion, so despite being a mostly unheard of company, we're not talking about some little startup here. MediaTek is expecting Airoha to see a revenue growth of around 30 percent in 2022, from 2021 revenues of around US$562 million. As these things go, it would appear that the main reason for listing Airoha isn't directly to make money, but rather to try and appeal to current and future employees. This is because of the peculiar bonus structure in most companies in Taiwan, where all employees are given a share of the profits, largely regardless of their personal and departments performance. With Airoha going public, its employees will no longer have to share their bonuses with MediaTek employees, which could in theory lead to better bonuses for their employees.
Sources: Nikkei Asia, Airoha
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5 Comments on MediaTek is Getting Ready to Spin off its Airoha Subsidiary

#1
DrCR
With Airoha going public, its employees will no longer have to share their bonuses with MediaTek employees, which could in theory lead to better bonuses for their employees.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Posted on Reply
#2
ThrashZone
Hi,
I'll be watching penny stocks :cool:
Posted on Reply
#3
TheLostSwede
News Editor
DrCRhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Yeah, real funny. I guess you don't understand how the bonus structure works in Taiwan.
Last year, some companies paid as much as 40 months bonus to their employees.
Normally you get two months, but good years there can be some decent profit sharing with employees in Taiwan.
Also, this is how companies in Taiwan retain their engineers, as if companies are not making profit, there's generally no bonus, which means the engineers leave for the competition.
So is this still a joke to you?
Posted on Reply
#4
DrCR
TheLostSwedeYeah, real funny. I guess you don't understand how the bonus structure works in Taiwan.
Last year, some companies paid as much as 40 months bonus to their employees.
Normally you get two months, but good years there can be some decent profit sharing with employees in Taiwan.
Also, this is how companies in Taiwan retain their engineers, as if companies are not making profit, there's generally no bonus, which means the engineers leave for the competition.
So is this still a joke to you?
Joke? No. Dream? Yes. For my career, profit sharing was bare minimum crumbs they gave to the peasants so the highest compensated could get additional compensation in a tax-advantaged matter. :\
Posted on Reply
#5
TheLostSwede
News Editor
DrCRJoke? No. Dream? Yes. For my career, profit sharing was bare minimum crumbs they gave to the peasants so the highest compensated could get additional compensation in a tax-advantaged matter. :\
Sorry to hear that. In Taiwan, a lot of people actually accepts employment with certain companies mainly for the profit sharing. Salaries are crap in Taiwan, with the average salary being around US$1,000 a month. Obviously engineers make more than that, but at most tech companies you're earning "good money" if you earn US$2,000-2,500 a month. So when companies don't make a profit (HTC for example), people leave, as their salaries end up being drastically lowered. The main bonus is generally around the lunar new year and if bonuses were bad, people start looking for new jobs as soon as the holiday is over. If you're lucky, you can earn 2-3x your yearly salary in bonuses during a good year.
The downside to this crap system is that you run the risk of losing your engineering talent at any point in time, if you're not doing well as a business.
Posted on Reply
Oct 31st, 2024 19:49 EDT change timezone

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