Formosa International Hotels Corp (FIHC, 晶華國際酒店集團), which operates the Formosa Regent Taipei (晶華酒店), expects to record higher sales and profitability this year through the expansion of its budget-priced Just Sleep (捷絲旅) hotels.
Earlier this month, FIHC launched its third hotel under the Just Sleep brand in Taipei and plans to launch three more in the second half of the year, one each in Greater Kaohsiung, Hualien County and Yilan County.
FIHC saw net profits rise by 4.68 percent in the first quarter from the same period last year to reach NT$322.1 million (US$10.77 million), or NT$3.33 per share, compared with the NT$307.69 million, or NT$3.18 per share, recorded a year earlier, the company’s stock exchange filing showed.
“The [Just Sleep] brand has attracted many individual tourists from Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia,” the company said in a statement.
FIHC expects the expansion of the Just Sleep hotel network to continue boosting the company’s sales and profitability in the second quarter, adding that an increase in its catering business — which accounts for more than half of its overall revenue — was also an important factor in driving profitability in the first quarter.
Ambassador Hotel (國賓大飯店), which operates three hotels and several restaurant brands, also saw its profitability grow in the first quarter from a year earlier.
Ambassador Hotel’s net profit totaled NT$93.47 million, or NT$0.26 per share, in the first three months of the year, compared with NT$71.78 million, or NT$0.2 per share, a year earlier, the company said in its stock exchange filing.
The hotel operator said sentiment in the second quarter may be flat, since the period from last month to next month is usually a weak season for the hotel sector.
The decrease in the amount of Japanese tourists visiting Taiwan this year caused by the depreciation of the yen may also create uncertainties for the hotel sector’s business this year, the company said.
Meanwhile, Hotel Royal Chihpen (知本老爺大酒店), another hotel operator, posted NT$10.33 million, or NT$0.27 per share, in net profit for the first quarter, down from NT$15.92 million, or NT$0.41 per share, during the same period last year, its financial statement showed.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to