Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) yesterday said it had bought an office building in a Taipei science park, as the nation’s second-largest life insurer continues efforts to seek satisfactory investment returns for shareholders after incurring equity losses.
In a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Shin Kong Life, a subsidiary of Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), said it purchased a 12-floor Primax Electronics Ltd (致伸科技) building with three basement levels in the Neihu Technology Park (內湖科技園區) for NT$2 billion (US$60.1 million).
The sum compares with appraisals made by DTZ Debenham Tie Leung (戴德梁行) of NT$2.24 billion and Honda Appraisers Joint Firm (宏大不動產) of NT$2.01 billion, the filing showed.
Shin Kong Life said it first purchased the building, with a floor space of 21,944.53m² (6,650 ping), and then leased it back to Primax Electronics for 15 years.
The company, however, did not specify in the filing how much yearly fixed rental income it expected to receive from its tenant. The Chinese-language United Evening News reported yesterday the deal would create a 4 percent rate of return to the company annually, citing an estimate made by Shin Kong Life’s real estate investment division.
Shares of Shin Kong Financial ended 5.14 percent lower at NT$8.68 yesterday before the investment was announced. The stock has dropped 61.1 percent so far this year, underperforming the benchmark index’s 47.3 percent decline over the same period, stock exchange tallies showed.
During the first 11 months of the year, Shin Kong Financial reported NT$16.1 billion in losses, or a NT$2.92 loss per share, making it the worst performer among the nation’s 14 financial holding services providers. The company had attributed its poor performance to declines in global stock markets and investment writedowns linked to Lehman Brothers.
Shin Kong Life’s latest real estate investment came after the company announced in October that it authorized its chairman, Eugene Wu (吳東進), and its management team to invest in quality real estate in Taiwan, especially in Taipei’s Neihu, Xinyi (信義) and Nangang (南港) districts, with a maximum investment of NT$20 billion.
Including the newly-purchased building, the life insurer currently has owned eight office buildings in the Neihu district, including two BenQ Corp (明基) buildings it acquired in July last year for NT$5.37 billion.
Overall, Shin Kong Life has invested more than NT$10 billion in the Neihu office building market, which is likely to generate a fixed rental income of NT$500 million annually, if these buildings are fully occupied by tenants, the online Cnyes.com news outlet reported yesterday, without siting its source.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
RSS