Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), the nation’s third-largest car distributor, yesterday said its board had passed a proposal to distribute cash dividends of NT$13.30 per share.
The proposed cash dividend, if approved by shareholders on June 14, would be 30.39 percent higher than the NT$10.20 payout last year.
With the company’s share price closing at NT$302.50 yesterday, the planned cash dividend translates into a dividend yield of 4.4 percent.
The payout ratio is 80.95 percent, based on the company’s earnings per share (EPS) of NT$16.43 last year. Consolidated net profit was NT$4.93 billion last year, up 28.7 percent from NT$3.83 billion a year ago, the company said.
In the first three months of this year, Yulon Nissan posted a profit of NT$1.28 billion, increasing 26.73 percent from NT$1.01 billion a year ago, because of higher non-operating income thanks to its Chinese subsidiary Dongfeng Nissan Passenger Vehicle Co (東風日產) and the yen’s depreciation.
The company’s profit last quarter was 23.07 percent higher than the NT$1.04 billion recorded in the fourth quarter last year.
Yulon Nissan vice president Leman Lee (李振成) said the company sold 3,270 cars in the first quarter, accounting for 11.9 percent of the local market. He expected the firm to sell 43,800 cars this year, with a market share of 12.17 percent.
The company also expects to sell 800,000 cars in China this year, up 3.9 percent from 770,000 units last year, Lee said by telephone.
“Customers will come back to the market after paying taxes in May,” Lee said, adding that promotion activities and new model launches should also attract buyers.
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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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