Grand Ocean Retail Group Ltd (大洋百貨集團), which operates 16 department stores in second-tier and third-tier cities in China, is set to slow its expansion pace and shift focus to adjustment of its current outlets.
“Launching one new outlet per year would be the company’s new goal,” Grand Ocean chairman Yan Siwen (顏思文) told a media briefing ahead of the company’s investors’ conference yesterday.
Originally, the company planned to launch two to five new outlets per year in the coming years, but Yan said the company had decided to spend more time improving its management in existing outlets amid market changes.
However, the company will maintain its strategy to concentrate the expansion in cities in east, central and south China, such as Nanjing, Wuhan and Fuzhou, aiming to integrate group resources easily, he added.
Grand Ocean has put more focus on improving store quality and raising profitability this year, while closing three loss-making department stores in China’s Changzhou, Wuxi and Shijiazhuang cities.
The company posted a net profit of NT$183.7 million, or NT$0.92 per share, during the April-to-June period, compared with NT$54.85 million, or earnings per share (EPS) of NT$0.29, recorded a year earlier, supported by lower management and marketing expenses and stronger non-business profit by its currency hedge strategy.
Consolidated revenue in the second quarter reached NT$1.67 billion (US$55.6 million), up 5.3 percent from a year earlier, it said.
For the first half of this year, net profit stood at NT$427.74 million, or EPS of NT$2.14, improving from the level of NT$322.2 million, or EPS of NT$1.74, recorded in the same period last year, the company’s data showed.
Yang said the company is considering forming joint ventures with potential partners, especially in the food, beverage and entertainment sectors, to introduce more Taiwanese brands in China.
The company will finish market research by the end of this year and seek to cooperate with potential partners next year, he added.
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
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”