Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) said yesterday it posted NT$15.54 billion (US$516.3 million) in net income last year, up 8.37 percent from the NT$14.34 billion it made a year earlier, according to a stock exchange filing.
Last year’s number was still 9.18 percent less than the NT$17.11 billion Mega Financial made in 2007, an indication that the financial holding company has still not recovered to its pre-recession level. In 2004, the Taipei-based company posted a record NT$21.9 billion in profit.
Based on the company’s 11.06 billion outstanding shares, last year’s profit translated into NT$1.41 in earnings per share, which compared with NT$1 per share in 2009, zero in 2008 and NT$2 in 2007.
Mega Financial is among the local financial firms that saw their balance sheets improve substantially last year on strong recovery in both net interest and fee incomes plus a significant decline in provision charges.
Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行), one of Taiwan’s leading lenders, yesterday posted NT$7.92 billion in net profit last year, or NT$1.28 per share, while privately run E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) reported on Wednesday that it made NT$4.61 billion in pre-tax profit last year, the highest in five years, or NT$1.31 per share.
Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀), the banking unit of state-run Mega Financial, generated NT$11.57 billion in profit last year, accounting for 74.45 percent of its parent company’s -earnings, the company’s filing showed yesterday.
That was followed by Mega Bills Finance Corp (兆豐票券) with NT$2.66 billion and Mega Securities Co (兆豐證券) with NT$1.4 billion.
However, non-life insurance unit Chung Kuo Insurance Co (兆豐產物保險) remained in the red last year, reporting a net loss of NT$64.18 million, it showed.
Shares in Mega Financial rose 1.14 percent to NT$22.1 yesterday on the TAIEX, ahead of the release of the company’s bottom line figures for last year. The bank’s stock has risen 16.32 percent over the last 12 months, outperforming the main bourse’s 6.67 percent increase, stock exchange data showed.
Mega Financial yesterday did not offer a forecast for this year, although the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported earlier yesterday the company might see profit increase by around 10 percent to NT$16.5 billion, which the bank denied in a separate filing.
Primasia Securities Co (犇亞證券) said it expected Mega Financial to play catch-up with other financial stocks this year. Moreover, Mega Bank’s application to upgrade its Suzhou representative office in China to a branch would provide a catalyst for share prices to trend further upward, it added.
“While we have seen Taiwan’s banking sector begin its re--rating over the past few weeks, we suggest investors keep an eye on Mega Financial, which we considered as a banking laggard which at the same time possesses good asset quality and earnings,” Primasia said in a client note yesterday.
Based on the Financial Supervisory Commission’s latest data, Mega Financial had the best asset quality of all the state-owned banks, as its non-performing loan ratio and coverage ratio were 0.44 percent and 184.9 percent, respectively, compared to the industry average of 0.7 percent and 141.5 percent.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CRYSTAL HSU
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the