A rebound in the cargo business for China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) together with steady passenger loads has helped the airline buck the trend and increase its consolidated sales last month from October.
CAL, the nation’s largest airline, posted NT$11.86 billion (US$400 million) in sales last month, 6.26 percent higher than in the same month a year earlier and 0.34 percent higher than in October, the company said in a stock exchange filing.
CAL’s sales in the first 11 months of the year reached NT$128.27 billion, which is 0.07 percent higher than for the same period last year, statistics showed.
A rebound in the cargo business was the major driver for sales last month, CAL chairman Sun Hung-hsiang (孫洪祥) said, adding that the company felt momentum in the cargo business last month, following the launch of new electronic products.
The passenger sector business also remained steady this year, with the volume of Taiwan’s outbound tourists continuing to grow and support local airline sales, Sun added.
The nation’s second-largest carrier, EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空), saw consolidated sales last month decrease from October on weaker seasonal demand within the passenger sector.
EVA’s revenue stood at NT$10.27 billion last month, up 4.39 percent from a year earlier, but down 6.21 percent from a month earlier, according to the company’s data.
For the first 11 months of the year, consolidated sales totaled NT$113.83 billion, an increase of 3.58 percent from the same period last year, company data showed.
Following a decline in global crude oil prices last month, brokerage house Capital Securities Corp (群益證券) said local airlines may enjoy lower aviation fueling costs this month, which may help to strengthen their profitability this quarter.
However, Capital Securities maintained a more pessimistic outlook for TransAsia Airways Corp (TNA, 復興航空) compared with EVA and CAL.
“The carrier’s focus on its regional passenger business in Asia means that aviation fuel represent a lower proportion of its overall costs,” the brokerage house said in a research note.
However, TNA’s profitability this quarter may be stronger than expected, following the company’s announcement on Monday that it may gain NT$600 million in non-operating income from state compensation over a legal case with the Ministry of National Defense.
TNA saw its consolidated sales reach NT$974.71 million last month, up 19.18 percent from a year earlier, but down 7.43 percent from October, company statistics showed.
From January to November, consolidated revenue totaled NT$11.26 billion, up 22.89 percent from a year ago, driven by the company’s move to launch several new routes in the first three quarters, according to TNA’s data.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by