President Chain Store Corp (
The board of the President Chain yesterday approved an investment of 100 million yuan (US$12.5 million) to be used in opening supermarkets in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The company has not yet made a decision on the specific number of stores to be opened in Chengdu, said Lillian Lin (
The President Chain invested in a supermarket chain in Beijing in 2004, and opened a Unimart (
The board also approved a proposal to increase investment by US$333,000 in its Shanghai Starbucks coffee stores, another company filing said.
Earlier in the shareholder meeting, the board decided to assign a record high NT$3.4 cash dividend to its shareholders, after its marketing strategy of handing out Hello Kitty magnets and brooches struck the right note with consumers.
With its 4,037 7-Eleven stores at the end of last year, the President Chain reported sales of NT$93.7 billion and after-tax earnings of NT$3.65 billion, or NT$3.99 per share. The company saw its highest earnings in 2003, when the earnings-per-share reached NT$4.29.
"We think we can see sales hit the NT$100 billion mark this year," Hsu Chung-jen (
He said that the company planned to expand the number of 7-Eleven stores in the country to 4,300 by the end of the year.
The dilemma over consumer credit defaults did not have a significant impact on the the President Chain's operations, with sales growing 12 percent to NT$39.35 billion for the first five months of the year from the same period a year earlier.
Separately, Taiwan FamilyMart Co (
The chain reported revenues of NT$29.68 billion last year, growing by 8.46 percent from a year ago. Pre-tax profits for last year topped NT$890 million, rising by 5.75 percent year-on-year. Earnings per share were NT$3.28.
As of Dec. 31 last year, the chain ran 1,851 stores nationwide, or a net increase of 151 outlets from the previous year, the statement said.
additional reporting by Jackie Lin
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group