Overall car sales nationwide would shrink about 2.3 percent this year as consumers tend to reduce spending on big-ticket items during economic slowdowns, Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) said yesterday.
The nation’s top vehicle vendor, cited softer economic growth worldwide and at home for its conservative forecast.
Economic risks are on the rise as US-China trade tensions, the UK’s Brexit plan and China’s hobbling economic expansion will likely dent global GDP growth, the company said.
“Because of the unfavorable factors, we are unlikely to have an optimistic outlook,” Hotai president Justin Su (蘇純興) told a media briefing in Taipei.
New car sales might drop to about 425,000 units this year, compared with 435,000 units last year, a second year of contraction, Su said.
Bucking the industry’s downtrend, Hotai, which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles, aims to increase its sedan sales this year by about 8.47 percent this year to 131,000 units — 110,000 Toyota and 21,000 Lexus vehicles.
The company last year sold 120,766 vehicles.
The company also aims to increase its market share to 30.8 percent, from 27.8 percent last year, Su said.
To stimulate sales, Hotai plans to launch revamps of Toyota RAV4 sports utility vehicle (SUV) and Altis sedan models next month.
The sales growth would also be driven by the new Lexus UX SUV, it said.
Su said he is confident overall that Hotai will see an annual profit growth this year, thanks to expansion in its car rental services and car financing and insurance businesses.
Hotai plans to grow its car rental service by adding the hybrid compact sedan Prius C to its fleet, Su said.
The company also plans to expand its rental services to include electric scooters in collaboration with a local motorcycle maker, he said.
Hotai Finance Co (和潤企業), a car loans and insurance service unit, is set to debut its shares on the main board in the fourth quarter this year.
In the first three quarters of last year, Hotai made NT$7.47 billion (US$242.29 million at the current exchange rate) in net profit, or earnings per share of NT$14.03.
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],”
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
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