Everest Textile Co (宏遠興業), a fabrics and garments manufacturer, yesterday forecast a year-on-year increase in revenue this quarter, citing strong growth momentum extending from last quarter due to customers’ low inventories.
Everest’s clients include North Face Inc, Columbia Sportswear Co, Decathlon Group and Nike Inc.
Due to the impact of a slow season and the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, the Tainan-based company said its sales this quarter might drop slightly from last quarter’s NT$2.09 billion (US$68.21 million), but sales are expected to pick up next quarter due to better production efficiency.
“We plan to spend between NT$700 million and NT$800 million on capital expenditures this year, mainly to improve production efficiency by replacing more than 300 flat-knitting machines in our plants in China and Thailand,” Everest president Roger Yeh (葉清來) told reporters on the sidelines of a functional fabric launch event in Taipei.
The replacement of old machines that have been in use for more than a decade is expected to boost production efficiency in the company’s manufacturing operations in China and Thailand by 40 percent, in addition to providing better product quality.
Yeh said Everest also plans to purchase 88 new knitting machines, with 35 of them to be used for developing and producing body mapping fabrics for functional clothing.
The machine replacement plan is set to benefit the firm’s sales in the second half of this year, Yeh said.
He declined to give a range for a sales estimate.
Yeh said the company has no plans at the moment to build new overseas plants, citing sufficient production capacity to meet demand.
However, the company plans to continue to invest in research and development, which is expected to enhance Everest’s market competitiveness through higher added value in its products, and therefore boost its gross margin.
In the first quarter, Everest’s gross margin stood at 18.49 percent, up 2.5 percentage points from last year’s 15.99 percent. Yeh attributed the improvement to lower costs and higher added value for the firm’s products.
Yeh said the firm’s Eversmile brand garment stores, which accounted for between 2 percent and 3 percent of the company’s total revenue last quarter, expanded to 110 locations across the nation, with 70 percent of the apparel shops run by Everest.
The company plans to increase the number of shops to 120 by the end of this year, which is expected to provide more than 1,200 jobs, he said.
The company reported net income of NT$110 million last quarter, or NT$0.25 per share, up 41.02 percent from NT$78 million a year ago. The figure dropped 9.91 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$2.32 billion.
Everest shares rose 1.39 percent to NT$18.25 in Taipei trading yesterday, while the TAIEX gained 1.15 percent.
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],”
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
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