PC maker Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday reported a third consecutive profitable quarter for last quarter, as the company’s new management team continues efforts to lower additional operating expenditure and help turn the company around.
However, the company still faces challenges to maintain steady revenue growth and margin improvement in a stagnant PC market where competition from Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) and Hewlett-Packard Co has increased.
Acer’s net income was NT$650.66 million (US$21.26 million) last quarter, or NT$0.24 per share, up 34.24 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$484.69 million. A year earlier, the firm reported a net loss of NT$13.11 billion.
Consolidated revenue hit NT$85.69 billion in the past quarter, down 7 percent year-on-year, but up 5.3 percent from the previous quarter, the company said in a press statement.
Operating income reached NT$1.1 billion for the quarter ending on Sept. 30, up NT$3.67 billion year-on-year, with an operating margin of 1.3 percent exceeding the previous two quarters, Acer said.
The firm’s PC shipments grew 13.3 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, outperforming the overall industry’s decline of 0.5 percent, according to statistics provided by International Data Corp.
In the first nine months of this year, the firm’s cumulative revenues totaled NT$244.14 billion, down 10.73 percent from a year earlier.
Separately, Acer’s board yesterday appointed Jerry Kao (高樹國) as president of Acer’s Notebook Business Group, effective as of Dec. 1.
Kao, who has more than 20 years of experience in the mobile PC industry, currently serves as general manager in the business group, where he co-heads with Acer Design Center president Jackson Lin (林永仁).
Acer said Lin, who also doubles as chief technology officer, is set to be released from his to focus on his core discipline of research and development.
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
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last