China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), Taiwan’s largest carrier, posted a record quarterly profit as an economic recovery spurred demand for cargo shipments and travel.
Net income surged sixfold to NT$3.71 billion (US$116 million) in the second quarter which ended June 30, from NT$595 million a year earlier.
The profit, derived from half yearly earnings reported by the Taipei-based company yesterday, were in line with the NT$3.7 billion average of three analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg over the past four weeks.
The results follow profit gains by competitors, including EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), Korean Air Lines Co and China Southern Airlines Co (中國南方航空公司).
As demand in Europe and the US boosts shipments of notebook computers and mobile phones from Taiwan and China, Taiwan’s GDP will probably expand 8.24 percent this year, compared with a contraction of 1.91 percent last year, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said last week.
“The global economic recovery is boosting demand for cargo transportation,” Tina Chen, a Taipei-based analyst at SinoPac Securities Corp (永豐金證券), said before the earnings release. “People are more willing to travel as the economy is doing well.”
Shares in China Airlines were unchanged at NT$21.20 at the close of trading in Taipei. The TAIEX gained 0.6 percent. The company released its results after the market’s close.
Second-quarter sales climbed 72 percent from a year earlier to NT$35.5 billion, based on first-quarter and six-monthly earnings reports.
The expansion of services between Taiwan and China has also helped to boost earnings at Taiwan’s carriers, said Chen, who has a “buy” rating on China Airlines’ stock.
China and Taiwan more than doubled the total number of cross-strait flights to 270 a week from Aug. 31.
China Airlines’ half yearly profit totaled NT$6.27 billion or NT$1.35 a share, compared with a loss of NT$2.37 billion or NT$0.71, a year earlier.
EVA Airways, Taiwan’s second-biggest carrier, reported first-half net income of NT$5.22 billion on Aug. 16, turning around a loss of NT$1.68 billion a year earlier.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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
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