Stake Pick Reports Lift Moschip

The share price of Moschip Semiconductor witnessed major gains following rumours that two multinational companies are picking up stakes in the company.

The stock hit the 20 per cent upper circuit filter and eased slightly to close at Rs 40.85 amid a volume of 1.2 lakh shares on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The rise in Moschip is purely a result of rumours that Flextronics, one of the fastest-growing electronics manufacturing services companies in the world, is taking a 4.6 per cent stake in the Hyderabad-based semiconductor design maker.

As per reports, ESS Tech, a Nasdaq-listed $300 million company, is also picking up a 9.16 per cent stake in the company.

Moschip rose 64.3 per cent to Rs 34.50 on March 15 from Rs 21 on January 16. During the same period, volumes reached a high of 18,050 shares on January 17 and a low of 100 shares on January 22. Currently, the promoters hold a 69.27 per cent stake in Moschip.

Meanwhile, Moschip has called an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders on March 27 to seek their approval for a preferential issue of equity shares and warrants.

A total of 31,60,000 equity shares and 9,50,000 warrants are proposed to be issued at Rs 30 per share. Moschip was incorporated in July 1999 with the objective of providing application specific integrated circuits.

The promoters of the company are K Ramachandra Reddy, C Dayakar Reddy and Vinay D Kumar.

The company specialises in integrated circuit (IC) design, manufacturing and marketing with particular focus on data communication ICs. The company proposes to develop system software for enabling the complete functionality of the ICs.

The company proposes to take up an expansion programme which consists of setting up a state of the art design center at Hyderabad and also acquiring technology in the asynchronous transfer mode and synchronous optical network area. The company also proposes to set up design centers at Pune, Noida, Bangalore and Chennai.

A new design center at Noida has commenced commercial operations on July 1, 2001. Netmos Technology Inc has now become a 100 per cent subsidiary of Moschip . For the third quarter ended December 31, 2001, the company posted a loss of Rs 1.20 crore.