The state-run Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), the nation’s largest mortgage provider, aims to boost earnings to more than NT$10 billion (US$340 million) this year and will set up an investment trust company in the first half to cash in on urban renewal fever, company executives said yesterday.
The unlisted bank’s pre-tax income totaled NT$9.35 billion last year — NT$1.87 in earnings per share — and 33.55 percent higher than the target, president Su Ler-ming (蘇樂明) told a media briefing.
“We expect earnings to surpass NT$10 billion this year” as improvement in corporate loans is expected to more than offset a modest decline in mortgage and land financing in the wake of tightening measures, he said.
Corporate banking and mortgage services made roughly equal contributions to the lender’s coffers.
Vice executive president Ruan Chien-ping (阮健平) said mortgage volume shrank about NT$1 billion each month after the central bank introduced selective credit control on second home loans in Taipei City and New Taipei City (新北市) in June last year.
Home loans stood at about NT$703.1 billion in December while land and construction lending was at NT$211.7 billion, translating into market shares of 10 percent and 21 percent respectively, Ruan said.
Ruan expects the mortgage volume to drop below NT$700 billion this year after the central bank in December lowered the loan-to-value ratio from 70 percent to 60 percent for second homes in Greater Taipei.
Land and construction financing is also expected to slide, Ruan said, after the amount is capped at 65 percent of acquisition costs or pricing evaluation, whichever is lower. However, the lender is optimistic that growth in fee and -interest -incomes at units at home and abroad would bolster overall earnings, Ruan said.
The bank expects recently established branches in New York and Shanghai, China, to turn a profit this year and the units in Los Angeles and Singapore have already done so, he said.
“The goal is not difficult given the global macroeconomic climate,” Ruan said.
Corporate banking aside, the lender intends to create the first state-run money manager specialized in real-estate investment trust. The bank plans to own a 75 percent stake in the planned firm with another state-run enterprise — which he declined to name — to take up the remaining 25 percent.
The firm is expected to be stablished by June with the first fund sized at NT$3 billion, Ruan said.
“People who cannot afford to buy a house may opt to invest in real estate funds,” he said.
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