Merida Industry Co (美利達), the nation’s No. 2 bicycle maker, yesterday said that it expects sales this quarter to post sequential growth from a quarter ago as the company’s new bicycle models for next year are in high demand after their launch last month.
“We have high confidence for our new models for next year; thus, we are optimistic about next quarter,” vice president Wang Long-chin (王隆進) said by telephone yesterday.
Changhua County-based Merida said its order visibility is about three months, and that it expects an increase in shipments for this quarter from last quarter.
Thanks to the new models, Merida’s revenue for last month would likely be higher than May’s NT$2.1 billion (US$70.19 million), posting a new record high, the company said.
The third quarter is the bicycle industry’s peak season, when major manufacturers release models for the following year, Wang said.
The company aims to sell 2.5 million bicycles this year, up 6.38 percent from the 2.35 million units it shipped a year ago, he said.
Wang said the company’s European sales would be the key growth driver this year, as that region’s economy recovers, while sales in the US and China are expected to increase only slightly this year.
From January through May, the company posted revenue of NT$9.82 billion, up 9.43 percent from NT$8.97 billion the previous year, according to Merida’s filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
In the first five months of the year, Merida sales in Europe and the US, which accounted for 65 percent of its revenue, rose 16 percent from a year ago, while shipments to the two areas increased 5 percent from the previous year, Wang said.
The company’s average selling price in the two markets grew 10 percent from a year ago, he added.
However, during the same period, total shipments of bicycles from Taiwan to Europe and the US declined by 8 percent, as Taiwanese bicycle sales to the two regions dropped by 7 percent from the previous year, Wang said, citing the latest industrial data.
Sales to China from January through May dropped 3 percent from a year ago, while shipments there declined by 6 percent from the previous year, Wang said.
Merida’s average selling price in China rose 3 percent compared with a year ago, he added.
China accounted for 35 percent of the firm’s total revenue.
“We believe the bicycle market in China is close to stagnant because of the Chinese government’s move to ban lavish banquets and expensive gifts and the serious air pollution and smog in the country,” Wang said.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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