Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) shares rallied 4 percent yesterday after the company announced that its subsidiary that distributes its own-brand Luxgen vehicles has started bankruptcy procedures in China, paving the way for its subsidiary Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車) to exit the world’s biggest auto market.
Sales of Luxgen vehicles tumbled to below 3,000 units last year amid a slump in the Chinese auto market, compared with 100,000 vehicles at its peak.
Yulon has been restructuring its Chinese auto business and distribution channels over the past year as it struggles to boost Luxgen sales in China.
Photo: Amy Yang, Taipei Times
Yulon on Friday said that the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court has granted a request from a major creditor of Dong Feng Yulon Sales Co (東方裕隆銷售) to liquidate the assets of the distributor, which cannot pay its debts of 1.96 billion yuan (US$297.7 million).
Dong Feng Yulon Sales, which is 50 percent owned by Yulon, distributes Luxgen vehicles in China, while Dongfeng Yulon Motor Co (東風裕隆汽車), a 50-50 venture between Yulon and Chinese automaker Dongfeng Automobile Co (東風汽車), makes Luxgen vehicles.
Yulon, based in Miaoli County’s Sanyi Township (三義), has been in discussions with its Chinese partner about a restructuring of Dongfeng Yulon Motor to stem losses, Yulon told investors in August.
“The court has approved that Dong Feng Yulon Sales Co should enter an insolvency procedure, given its financial situation,” Yulon spokesman Steven Lo (羅文邑) told a media briefing at the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday.
“The company’s operations have been suspended since 2018. This incident will not affect Yulon’s financial reports in the first three quarters of 2020. Based on our current evaluation, it will not cause a significant financial payment, nor incur a deep debt,” he said.
Dong Feng Yulon Sales, which has paid-in capital of NT$215 million (US$7.46 million), last year fell into a dire financial situation, with liabilities surging to NT$8.39 billion, greatly exceeding its assets of NT$404 million, according to Yulon’s annual report.
Yulon shares jumped to NT$37.7 yesterday, with turnover surging to 10.62 million shares, three times the average trading volume of 3.1 million shares in the first 10 trading days of this month.
Yulon’s net profit grew 31 percent to NT$744.15 million in the quarter that ended on Sept. 30, compared with net profit of NT$567.32 million in the second quarter and a net loss of NT$1.57 billion in the third quarter of last year.
In the first three quarters of this year, Yulon made NT$1.51 billion in net profit, an improvement from a net loss of NT$2.51 billion in the corresponding period last year. This translated into earnings of NT$1.54 per share, compared with a loss of NT$3.2 per share.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
RSS