Yizhong Ending 3》Selling properties, selling patents, and selling teams! HTC’s assets are still 38.8 billion

HTC has a strong financial background. (File photo)

[Reporter Gao Jiahe/Taipei Report] HTC, which started with smartphones, announced in 2015 that it would officially enter the VR (virtual reality) market. Faced with high R&D costs and an immature VR environment, in recent years it has adopted a financial strategy of revitalizing assets and exchanging space for time. It also relies on "selling properties, selling teams, and selling patents" to support its transformation, and has repeatedly reversed losses in the industry with the help of outside industry income. According to HTC's latest semi-annual report, total assets on the books still reached 38.86 billion yuan, showing that the family's financial resources are still deep.

HTC reached the peak of NT$1,300 in 2011, with its market capitalization exceeding NT$1 trillion. However, due to headwinds in the mobile phone market, it suffered a loss in 2013. Although it made a small profit in 2014, from 2015 to the present, except for profits in 2018 and 2025 due to the disposal of patents, land and factories, etc., it has suffered losses in the rest of the years.

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Due to the deficit in the smartphone industry and the high cost of VR research and development, HTC launched a series of asset disposals in 2015 to enrich working capital, including the purchase of the Taoyuan factory for NT$6.06 billion in 2015. The TY5 building was sold to Inventec, with a disposal profit of approximately 2.1 billion yuan. In 2017, the mobile phone team was sold to Google for US$1.1 billion, or approximately NT$33 billion, directly handing over the main mobile phone hardware research and development force. This transaction pushed HTC's after-tax earnings per share (EPS) in 2018 to 14.72 yuan, successfully turning a loss into a profit.

From 2019 to 2020, it will continue to streamline non-core assets, sell land use rights and factories in Shanghai for hundreds of millions of yuan, and withdraw from large-scale fixed costs of mobile phone assembly and manufacturing; in January 2025, it will transfer its XR (mixed reality) R&D team members to Google for US$250 million, approximately NT$8.19 billion, and grant XR intellectual property rights (IP) to Google in a non-exclusive licensing manner. The second transaction with Google highlights HTC EPS 9.83 yuan.

In the same year, a total of 17 land and buildings in Taoyuan, Yingge, etc. were sold to Pegatron, contributing EPS of approximately 4.67 yuan. With these two large transactions, HTC's EPS in 2025 was 7.21 yuan.

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