Toshiba has disposed of six million shares of Phison Electronics, its supplier of controllers for flash memory cards. Toshiba's stake in Phison is therefore reduced to 11.99% from 16% originally.
Toshiba remains Phison's largest shareholder, Phison has claimed, adding that the vendor's move to sell the shares will not affect the relationship between the two.
Market sources speculate the share release is aimed to help strengthen Toshiba's financial structure, which was hurt by a recent outage at its plant. The sources estimated Toshiba is likely to gain around NT$1 billion through the sale of Phison shares.
Phison's shares closed down 1.2% at NT$168.50 (US$5.63) on December 20.