ELECTRONICS
Merry Electronics shares fall
Shares in speaker and earphone supplier Merry Electronics Co (美律) plunged yesterday after Credit Suisse downgraded its rating on the stock to “neutral” from “outperform” on dim sentiment toward the company’s likely entertainment-product sales and its limited prospects for margin improvement this year. Merry shares declined 6.86 percent to NT$85.6 in Taipei trading. They are down 17.58 percent so far this year, compared with the benchmark TAIEX’s 3.76 percent rise. “Despite a favorable product mix migration, we believe any benefits from this shift are likely to be offset by pricing pressure and an increase of 10 to 15 percent in labor costs in China,” Credit Suisse said in a note. The brokerage cut its earnings forecasts by 14 percent and 19 percent for this year and next year respectively, and lowered its share price target to NT$97 from NT$140.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Wowprime’s Day to retire
The head of restaurant chain operator Wowprime Corp (王品集團) has a message for its shareholders this year — he will retire in three years. At the company’s annual general meeting in Taichung on Thursday, Wowprime chairman Steve Day (戴勝益) said he would hand over the company’s top post to a policymaking management team on Dec. 10, 2018, when he turns 65. Apart from Day, the management team also includes Wowprime co-founder Chen Cheng-hui (陳正輝), vice chairman Endy Wang (王國雄), Wowprime China CEO Lobo Lee (李森斌) and two other company executives.
E-COMMERCE
PChome eyes B2C market
Online shopping portal PChome Online Inc (網路家庭) is set to launch a new business-to-consumer (B2C) platform next week, as the company seeks to further engage with the nation’s small and medium-sized suppliers. The company plans to hold a press conference next week, at which PChome chairman Jan Hung-tze (詹宏志) would formally introduce the new platform, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported yesterday. PChome’s B2C sales saw 22 percent annual growth last year, driven mainly by more non-information technology product offerings.
Pharmaceuticals
TWi obtains US licenses
TWi Pharmaceuticals Inc (安成), a developer of specialty generic drugs, yesterday said its fully-owned subsidiary, TWi Pharmaceuticals USA, has obtained sales licenses from all 50 US states. The company said it has been in close contact with the major retail pharmacy distributors and wholesalers in the US and expects to have its own-label specialty generic products soon sold through these channels. TWi Pharmaceuticals shares fell by the maximum daily limit of 7 percent to NT$190 yesterday, after the company said on Thursday the release of its new drug, Lidoderm, might be delayed until next year.
Aviation
EVA Air to expand flights
EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空), the nation’s second-largest airline, yesterday said it is expanding its market base in North America by opening up new routes and increasing the number of flights on existing ones. From June 19, the airline is set to launch three flights per week between Taoyuan and Houston, Texas, and is scheduled to increase the number to four from July 1. In addition, EVA is to increase the number of weekly flights to Toronto and Vancouver from Taiwan starting from Dec. 12. On Thursday, the airline said it would add more flights to its route between Taiwan and Singapore from June 21.
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