Billionaire Li Ka-shing's (
Third-quarter profit was HK$18.5 million (US$2.4 million), or 0.48 Hong Kong cent a share, compared with a net loss of HK$44.1 million, or 1.34 cents, a year ago. To reach its full-year forecast, Tom.com needs to erase a HK$14 million deficit accumulated in the first nine months and losses in the current quarter from a newly acquired Chinese television channel.
"We are moving closer to full-year profitability," Chief Executive Sing Wang (
Listed during the Internet boom in 2000, Tom.com bought publishers in Taiwan and expanded into sports marketing and mobile-phone messaging, helping it to more than double revenue last year.
Third-quarter sales were almost unchanged at HK$456.4 million after organizers canceled sports events and Chinese mobile-phone companies stopped collecting revenue for some third-party Web sites linked to Tom.com's portal.
Shares of Tom.com rose 1.1 percent to close at HK$2.30 in Hong Kong, before the earnings were released. The stock has gained 24 percent this year, lagging a 27 percent jump by the Growth Enterprise Market index, of which it's a member.
Shares of Sina Corp and Sohu.com Inc, two other Web companies that rely on Chinese cellphone users for revenue, have jumped more than five times this year, trading at multiples of more than 70 times earnings, as investors bet more Chinese will pay to download content from their Web sites.
Wang said he expects wireless revenue, which made up about a fifth of Tom.com's third-quarter sales, will grow at more than 10 percent every quarter in 2004. The company, which is expanding into online games, expects to start collecting revenue in the second quarter.
Tom.com's costs of goods sold dropped 11 percent in the third quarter, and administrative expenses fell 22 percent, helping the company to return to profit from a year earlier.
Tom.com wants to sell shares in its Internet unit after agreeing to buy a China wireless messaging business.
The company, which bought control of AOL Time Warner Inc's China Entertainment Television Broadcast Ltd during the third quarter, said the broadcaster will contribute a "significant loss" this quarter.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained