In the wake of the government’s announcement of a plan to issue consumer vouchers to all Taiwanese citizens, stocks in the food, department store and consumer retail sectors — which are expected to benefit the most from the new plan — led the gains on the local bourse yesterday.
Food stocks including manufacturers Ve Wong Corp (味王), Charoen Pokphand Enterprise (Taiwan) Co (卜蜂), AGV Products Corp (愛之味), Lian Hwa Foods Corp (聯華食品) and Namchow Group (南僑集團) all saw their shares close limit-up on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Ve Wong rose to NT$11.6 from NT$10.85, Charoen Pokphand closed at NT$10.05 after closing at NT$9.42 yesterday and AGV Products closed at NT$5.5, compared with NT$5.16 — all three hitting the 7 percent daily maximum.
Share prices for Far Eastern Department Stores Ltd (遠東百貨), the nation’s only listed department store chain, jumped limit-up to NT$13.8 at the start of trading yesterday, while local conglomerate Mercuries & Associates Ltd (三商行), and the leading retailer of children’s garments, Les Enphants Co (麗嬰房), were trading limit-up by midday.
The announcement also helped bolster share prices of the country’s two largest consumer electronics retailers — Tsann Kuen Enterprise Co (燦坤實業) and E-Life Mall Corp (全國電子), which both closed limit-up for the second straight day.
After the Cabinet announced yesterday that the issuance of consumption vouchers would not be limited to lower-income households, department store retailers began to map out strategies to grab a piece of the pie.
To take advantage of the opportunity, department store operators in Taiwan are considering models similar to the successful “Fortune Bags” (福袋) model used during the Lunar New Year holiday, when the stores hand out gift bags to consumers who spend a certain amount of money.
As to what consumers will do with their vouchers, hypermarket and department store chain operators believe they will mostly spend on daily necessities, while home appliance retailers are upbeat about sales of items priced around NT$1,000.
Pacific Sogo Department Stores (太平洋崇光百貨) predicted that consumers would likely use their vouchers around the Lunar New Year holiday and spend on a variety of products and services including supermarket goods, dining, home appliances, consumer electronics, stationery, children’s apparel, women’s seasonal clothing and accessories, health products, down jackets and bed comforters.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts but now outsources the chore to artificial intelligence (AI) agent tool OpenClaw, which is taking China by storm despite official warnings over cybersecurity. OpenClaw, created in November by an Austrian coder, differs from bots such as ChatGPT because it can execute real-life tasks such as sending e-mails, organizing files or even booking flight tickets. “Since January, I’ve spent hours on the lobster every day,” Gao said in an interview, referring to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. “We’re family.” After downloading OpenClaw, users connect it to artificial intelligence models of their
RSS