China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) president Sun Hung-hsiang (孫洪祥) said yesterday he had seen signs of recovery in the company’s cargo business this quarter on the back of strong shipments of newly launched electronic products.
“The launch of new Windows 8 products and Apple Inc’s new smartphone and tablet devices has mildly boosted cargo traffic on CAL’s routes to the US and Europe,” Sun told reporters on the sidelines of the opening of the Taipei International Travel Fair.
Sun said the air cargo business would show a significant rebound in the second half of next year along with a gradual upturn in the global economy.
Prices of aviation fuel have recently dropped to US$124 per barrel, in line with the downward trend of global crude oil prices. However, Sun said prices were still higher than the “reasonable” levels of around NT$115 per barrel estimated by the company.
Sun said how global oil prices would move remained the greatest uncertainty for the sector’s potential profitability during the October-to-December period. Therefore, in spite of stable passenger-flight sales and recovering cargo demand, the firm remained cautiously optimistic about its business performance this quarter.
In the first half of the year, CAL posted a net loss of NT$1.04 billion (US$35.49 million), or a loss per share of NT$0.23, compared with a loss of NT$661.5 million, or NT$0.17 per share, a year earlier.
TransAsia Airways Corp (TNA, 復興航空) chairman Vincent Lin (林明昇) also expressed optimism about the company’s performance in the fourth quarter, expecting quarterly revenue to remain flat from the same period last year.
TNA — which focuses on regional routes — is likely to see full-year revenue grow 10 percent to 20 percent from last year, he said.
The company returned to the black in the first half of the year by posting a net profit of NT$45.54 million, or earnings per share of NT$0.08, statistics showed.
The four-day travel fair, which has more than 1,000 booths and 60 countries represented, is expected to attract more than 250,000 visitors and create NT$1.5 billion in revenue, according to the Taiwan Visitors Association.
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