Multichannel retailer ETMall (東森購物) has said it would cut its workforce by 200 employees by the end of the year.
In a statement on Monday, ETMall’s owner Eastern Media Group (東森媒體) attributed the move to rising electricity bills, hikes to Taiwan’s minimum wage and interest payments which had caused operating costs to increase by NT$130 million (US$4 million).
Sales on ETMall’s online shopping platform fell by NT$5.9 billion from 2021 to last year — a 58 percent drop — while revenues for its TV shopping division shrank by 20 percent to NT$6.5 billion during the same period, Eastern Media said.
Photo courtesy of Eastern Media Group
Eastern Media said employees who do not take voluntary redundancy would be given help to find new positions within the company.
While ETMall’s offline retail division has posted consistent losses since opening last year, Eastern Media said sales at its shopping mall in Taipei Main Station grew 345 percent in the 12-month period that ended in October.
Eastern Media said it would shutter ETMall’s loss-incurring fresh food online shopping network as well as its Ponta points-based rewards program.
ETMall’s TV shopping channels are also under pressure due to declining cable subscribers, which have fallen from a peak of 5.2 million households to below 4.4 million, Eastern Media said.
Despite some of its holdings incurring losses, Eastern Media said that the group remained profitable, adding that ETMall’s best-performing employees would be given a 5 percent pay raise after the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.
Lu Chih-ming (盧志銘), a specialist from the New Taipei City Labor Affairs Department, yesterday said that ETMall has notified his department of its workforce reduction plans.
Lu said that to his knowledge, many of the workers affected by ETMall’s downsizing plan had accepted voluntary severance packages.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS