EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空) said it expects sales and profitability to perform “excellently” next year on the back of a downward trend in global crude oil prices, the steady recovery of the global economy and the rebound in the company’s cargo business.
“The decline of global crude oil prices has benefited the company’s cost structure,” EVA chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) told a press conference.
If global oil prices sustain the recent trend and the global economy remains solid next year, EVA might have a chance of posting excellent sales and profitability after seeing signs of improvement this year, Chang said.
In addition, EVA might also see extra momentum from its cargo business next year, driven by the demand for Apple Inc’s new iPhone and iPad products around the world, he said.
As for the passenger business, Chang said steady growth is likely to continue next year as EVA plans to launch two new regular services, from Taipei to Houston and from Greater Kaohsiung to Osaka.
EVA has raised its overall capacity in the passenger sector by about 10 percent for this year, with passenger capacity next year still expected to show an upturn due to the carrier’s development in routes to North America and northeastern Asia.
However, there are still some uncertainties facing the carrier next year, including the value of the New Taiwan dollar and the deadly Ebola outbreak in west Africa, according to Chang.
A depreciation of the NT dollar against the US dollar would raise EVA’s operating costs, offsetting the positive effect from a decrease in fuel costs, he said.
The Ebola epidemic is likely to have a negative impact on the global airlines sector, similar to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndromes (SARS) in 2003, he said. However, thus far, the impact is still limited, he added.
EVA posted NT$98.15 billion (US$3.23 billion) in consolidated revenue for the first nine months of the year, up 5.97 percent from a year earlier, company statistics showed.
The carrier reported a net loss of NT$789.35 million, or NT$0.24 per share, for the first six months of this year and might return to the black in the third quarter. The company is to release its third-quarter results in the middle of next month.
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
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