Footwear supplier Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業) on Tuesday last week reported that net income in the first half of the year increased 13.6 percent from the same period last year, due mainly to non-operating gains.
Net income attributable to the parent company totaled NT$4.87 billion (US$158.1 million) in the first six months, up from NT$4.29 billion a year earlier thanks to non-operating gains of NT$3.01 billion, especially NT$2.44 billion in income derived from Nan Shan Life Insurance Co’s (南山人壽) equity and bond investments, Pou Chen said in a statement.
Pou Chen, the world’s largest manufacturer of branded athletic and casual footwear, holds a 18.13 percent stake in Nan Shan. Apart from Nan Shan, the company has investments ranging from shoe manufacturing to footwear retailing, and from electronics to banking and land development.
The capital gains from Nan Shan were NT$1.85 billion higher than a year earlier and helped Pou Chen offset the decline in operating income, which was due to order fluctuations in contract manufacturing and a drive to upgrade its retail business, Pou Chen said.
Pou Chen has been pushing for business transformation to cope with the fast-changing market dynamics. In the first half of the year, its retail business accounted for 40.6 percent of the company’s sales, up from 32.7 percent in the same period last year, while shoe manufacturing comprised about 59.1 percent, sliding from 66.9 percent a year earlier.
Overall sales increased 3.4 percent year-on-year to NT$141.42 billion from NT$136.82 billion a year earlier, company data showed.
Pou Chen said its operating income decreased 24.8 percent year-on-year to NT$6.32 billion in the six-month period, with operating margin falling from 6.1 percent to 4.5 percent.
Gross margin declined from 25.9 percent to 25.5 percent in the period, it said.
In the first half, earnings per share were NT$1.65, up from NT$1.45 a year earlier, it said.
For the second half of the year, Pou Chen’s manufacturing subsidiary, Yue Yuen Industrial (Holdings) Ltd (裕元工業), might continue to see a business downtrend, while its retail business, Pou Sheng International Ltd (寶勝國際), could see gross margin remain under pressure amid rising competition from online shopping in China, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) analyst Peggy Shih (施姵帆) said in a client note.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day