Shareholders of Formosa International Hotels Corp (
The dividend is the highest in the traditional sector.
The firm, which runs the five-star Grand Formosa Regent Taipei, has reduced capital twice in line with the firm's strategy to expand restaurant operations rather than to purchase land to build more hotels.
It now boasts NT$600 million (US$18.2 million) in capital.
The hotel group saw its occupancy rate shrink to 78.32 percent last year, compared with 83.93 percent in 2005.
The number of guests it received last year was 219,486, down by 6.6 percent from a year earlier.
Chairman Steven Pan (潘思亮) said in a report released yesterday that the hotel sector overall was affected by weak domestic consumption and fewer inbound tourists than expected.
Last year, Taiwan received 3.52 million foreign tourists, up by 4.19 percent from 2005. Japanese, the largest source of the nation's inbound travelers, made 1.16 million visits -- a rise of 3.3 percent.
Both indicators showed that growth rates were slowing compared with their double-digit jumps in 2005.
Formosa International raked in revenues of NT$2.65 billion last year, down by 1.14 percent from the previous year. After-tax profits reached NT$792 million, accounting for 90 percent of the budgeted target.
The Ambassador Hotel also declared a cash dividend of NT$0.8 per share during a shareholders' meeting yesterday.
Guest room revenues reached NT$937 million last year, a decrease of 3.03 percent from the previous year.
Food and beverage sales were NT$1.45 billion, down by 2.11 percent from 2005.
Shares of Formosa International closed down NT$12.5 at NT$315.5 on the local bourse yesterday, while those of the Ambassador Hotel edged up NT$0.1 to NT$35.6.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li