EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), the nation’s No. 2 carrier, yesterday said it planned to acquire a 16 percent share of Chinese air cargo company China Cargo Airlines Ltd (中國貨運) for 328 million yuan (US$49.3 million) to boost its cargo business in China.
EVA Airways’ announcement comes after China Cargo said it would be integrating with another Chinese cargo company, Shanghai Airlines Cargo International Co Ltd (上海貨運航空), of which EVA Airways owns a 25 percent stake.
The investment aims to boost profits and to increase EVA Airways’ cargo network deployment in China, the firm said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday after its board approved the purchase.
“We are bullish about China’s cargo market. China Cargo Airlines is a large-scale cargo service provider in China and will provide us an edge [that will benefit our growth in China],” a company official said.
EVA Airways expects its revenue from the cargo business to grow 70 percent this year from last year, the official said, citing help from the global economic recovery.
Such growth would increase contribution of the cargo business to the firm’s total yearly revenue to about 40 percent this year, up from 33 percent last year, the company said.
The company’s revenue grew about 49 percent to NT$85.46 billion (US$2.87 billion) in the first three quarters from NT$57.41 billion last year.
The company’s board yesterday also agreed to promote president James Jeng (鄭光遠) to vice chairman and name vice president Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) as president.
Chang, the youngest son of Evergreen Group (長榮集團) founder Chang Yung-fa (張榮發), returned to the airline company in September after stepping down as the carrier’s president four years ago.
Shares of EVA Airways rose 0.58 percent to NT$34.9 yesterday, while rival China Airlines Ltd (華航) increased 0.41 percent to NT$24.25. The benchmark TAIEX edged up 0.19 percent.
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
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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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day