Aurora Corp (震旦行), a Taiwan-based office automation equipment and furniture supplier, said on Saturday it expects its operations will improve quarter by quarter this year on the back of its China market expansion.
While Aurora will stick to the strategy of targeting Taiwan’s private sector as well as government agencies to further penetrate the local market, the company will strengthen its distribution network in China in a bid to boost sales, it said.
PROFIT
Photo: CNA
In the first quarter of this year, Aurora posted NT$240 million (US$8.1 million) in net profit, up 13 percent from a year earlier with earnings per share at NT$0.78 after the company’s sales rose 6 percent from a year ago to NT$3.33 billion – the figures represented the highest profit and sales level in the company’s history.
Eyeing the huge office chair market in China that has an annual output of 18 billion Chinese yuan (US$2.8 billion), Aurora has set up a joint venture with Fursys Inc, one of South Korea’s leading office furniture vendors.
Through the partnership, the two companies will work with each other in brand development, production as well as product design and research in a bid to gain a larger share in the expanding Chinese market.
Aurora said it sells about 200,000 office chairs in China every year and the cooperation deal it has agreed with Fursys should double that figure.
new business
Aurora Systems Corp (互盛), a subsidiary of Aurora, which specializes in office equipment, such as photocopy and fax machines, is planning to start a photocopier-leasing business in China.
The unit will invest 120 million Chinese yuan in the new business which is scheduled to become operational in the third quarter of this year.
In addition, Aurora has established a “one-stop service” hub in Shanghai through the realignment of its resources in design, technology, quality control, product exhibition, logistics and education.
logistics center
In the Shanghai hub, a logistics center is scheduled to be inaugurated in June with warehousing space to expand by 90 percent and the number of loading docks to increase to 18, the company said.
Aurora said the Shanghai facility is expected to improve the company’s production efficiency and to help bring down its operating costs for its Chinese operations.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by