FX Hotels Group Inc (富驛酒店集團), which manages about 40 direct operating and franchise hotels in Taiwan and China, will up its expansion pace by signing franchise contracts with a total of 100 hotels per year before 2016.
“We have been signing franchise contracts with 90 hotels in China this year, with 39 of them already launching operations,” company spokeswoman Hou Chia-chen (侯嘉禎) told the Taipei Times during an interview on Tuesday last week.
FX Hotels will continue the franchise strategy in China to build up its presence there in the next two years, with the company expecting to sign the franchise contract with 100 hotels a year before 2016, Hou said.
In Taiwan, the group has plans to launch a new hotel under the FX Inn brand by the end of this year, followed by a resort hotel near Yehliu Geopark in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Wanli Township (萬里) and a fashion-style hotel in Greater Tainan next year, she said.
Founded in 2002, FX Hotels launched its first hotel in Taiwan in 2011 following years of doing business in China. The group has four brands with different focuses, including fashion hotel brand FX Hotels (富驛時尚酒店), boutique hotel brand Boutix (泊逸精品酒店), FX Inn (富驛商旅) and luxury resort brand Artix (雅逸渡假酒店).
Last week, the group completed issuing NT$200 million (US$6.74 million) in corporate bonds and will use proceeds from the fundraising to strengthen its financial structure and for future business expansion, Hou said.
In the first half of the year, FX Hotels reported net profits of NT$6.29 million, or NT$0.2 per share, after a net loss of NT$17.64 million, or NT$0.6 per share, during the same period last year.
Consolidated revenue stood at NT$6.05 billion from January through last month, up 21.57 percent from a year earlier, the company’s data showed.
Shares of FX Hotels rose 1.05 percent to close at NT$48 on Friday on the over-the-counter GRETAI Securities Market.
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