FET to wholly own Sparq in two steps

Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET), one of the three largest mobile telecom carriers in Taiwan, will increase its stake in New Century InfoComm Tech (Sparq as trade name), an operator of fixed-line telecom services in Taiwan, from 83.10% currently to 100% through its wholly owned subsidiary, Yuan Cing Infocomm Tech, in two steps, FET's board of directors made the decision at an August 31 meeting.

Yuan Cing, currently holding an 11.46% stake in Sparq, will acquire the entire ownership of Sparq through issuing new shares to swap all of Sparq shares at 1:1 in the first step, FET indicated. The issuance of new shares will decrease FET's stake in Yuan Cing by less than 10%, then FET will acquire the remaining stake at a tentative price of NT$10.93 per share to merge with Yuan Cing in the second step, with FET to be the surviving company to wholly own Sparq.

In related news, FET, viewing that smartphone subscribers contribute much higher ARPU (average revenues per user) than other subscribers, will offer five additional smartphone models with contract-bundled subsidies in September-December 2010, according to the company.

FET offered subsidized iPhone 3G and 3GS in March 2010 and five more smartphone models - two from HTC, two from Acer and one from Nokia - in July-August, the company said. FET had 3.705 million 3G subscribers, of whom 377,700 used smartphones at the end of July 2010, the company noted.