Despite its pessimistic view on the consumer spending trend, Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) said yesterday it expected to see a mild recovery in its consumer banking business this year, executives said yesterday.
“Although consumers are cutting back on spending, an increasing number are turning to our monthly installation plan [to pay credit card bills], which contributes to our fee income-based business,” chief investment officer Daniel Wu (吳一揆) told a media briefing yesterday.
An improving credit card environment will allow the company to seek a much more normal risk-based pricing this year by, for example, charging cardholders late-payment fees or annual membership fees, he said.
Weaker growth last year also means the company has a lower base of comparison for its consumer banking business this year, he said.
Chinatrust Financial reported 10 percent year-on-year growth in net profit to NT$14.71 billion (US$420.8 million) last year — the highest among the nation’s 14 financial service providers. That translated into earnings of NT$1.51 per share last year.
Despite its sound earnings last year, the company may not be able to pay out big dividends to shareholders this year after setting aside NT$11.65 billion in earnings as capital reserves, chief financial officer Hsu Miao-chiu (�?R) said.
The company’s net interest income declined 9.1 percent year-on-year to NT$29.8 million last year, accounting for 50 percent of overall income.
Following a series of rate cuts by the central bank from September, Wu said the company’s net interest margin would likely narrow this year from an average of 1.87 percent last quarter.
Revenues from the company’s fee income-based businesses dropped 10 percent to NT$22.5 billion last year, accounting for 38 percent of all income.
Affected by the global financial crisis, the company reported a 35.6 percent year-on-year drop in fee income from wealth management to NT$7.37 billion last year, Wu said, adding that this could further slow down this year.
But the company saw 14.4 percent year-on-year growth in fee income from credit cards to NT$7.9 billion last year — the biggest contributor to its fee income-based businesses.
Its subsidiary, Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商銀), reported NT$12.6 billion in net profit last year, accounting for 85 percent of the parent company’s full-year profit.
Chinatrust Bank saw corporate loans rise a significant 10 percent to NT$551 billion last year.
The bank expects to see solid growth this year amid a pickup in demand for funding from China-based businesses, as well as those in the Philippines and Indonesia, the bank said.
Company chairman Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松) also said earlier yesterday that the government should issue another round of consumer vouchers to spur growth in domestic consumption.
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