PChome Online Inc. (8044.TW) today (Sep. 17th, 2021) is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with China Development Financial (“CDF”), Chunghwa Telecom (“CHT”) and the founders of 21st Century Digital Technology Co., Ltd (“21CD”). The strategic investors will jointly subscribe PChome’s NT$1 billion private placement, representing 9,376,463 common shares of the company, or 7.35% of the enlarged share base. The private placement is priced at NT$106.65 per share.
The strategic partnership, together with the industry leaders from the financial and telecom industries, reinforces our mission statement to build an “everyday reliable” product and service portfolio to fulfill the consumers’ demands. It’s also a major step forward for PChome to work together with strategic partners to multiply the impact of “PChome ecosystem”.
To strengthen the cooperation and unlock potential synergies, PChome will subsequently acquire a controlling stake (~50%) in 21CD by 1) investing NT$2.16 billion in cash to obtain the shares from its founders and 2) exchanging PChome’s shareholding in its Fintech subsidiary Pi Mobile Technology (“Pi”) for 21CD’s new shares, based on an exchange ratio that 1 common share of Pi can be exchanged for 0.29795959 new common share issued by 21CD.
As an investment portfolio company of CDF’s venture capital arm, 21CD is one of the fastest growing BNPL platforms in Taiwan. Its BNPL service was also launched at PChome B2C platform in the first quarter of 2021. With PChome ecosystem’s rich traffic and data flow from day-to-day transactions across buyers and sellers, we believe the new partnership, including the combination of 21CD and Pi, can significantly speed up PChome’s fintech business roadmap and its path to profitability, by leveraging our partners’ financial product knowhow, credit data system, experienced management team, and capital support.
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