Taipei real-estate developer Taroko Development Corp (大魯閣開發) is scheduled to join the nation’s shopping center industry by taking over a shopping mall in Taichung next month and launching another in Kaohsiung later this year, a company executive said.
The new business is expected to generate a combined revenue of NT$8 billion (US$257.8 million) next year for its parent company, Taroko Textile Corp (大魯閣纖維).
Taroko Development announced in the middle of last year that it had leased the Mode Mall (新時代購物中心) — near Taichung Station — from Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) and would take over its operation on July 1 after renovations.
“Through the adjustment of operations strategy, the mall’s annual sales could reach NT$4.5 billion in 2017,” chief executive David Kuo (郭大睿) told a news conference.
The company plans to spend NT$300 million next year on redecorating the mall to help raise its sales target in 2017 above the NT$3 billion recorded last year, Kuo said.
The Taichung shopping center is a community-based department store, a style that has strong growth potential in the nation’s second-tier cities, while investment is smaller than in malls in the largest population centers, Kuo said.
That is in line with the company’s strategy to “focus more on operations and less on assets,” Kuo said.
Therefore, Taroko might expand its shopping center business by focusing on mid-sized department stores, aiming to launch one new store per year in the future, Kuo said.
Regions like Danhai New Town (淡海新市鎮) in New Taipei City and Hsinchu County’s Chupei City (竹北) are possible locations under consideration.
However, other than taking over management of the mall in Taichung, the company is ready to launch a large shopping center in Kaohsiung by the end of this year.
With the authorization of Suzuka Circuit of Japan, a racing venue, Taroko is set to establish a kart racing track at Taroko Park Kaohsiung (大魯閣草衙道), making it a shopping center with multiple entertainment and sports facilities.
Taroko Development chairman Jeff Tsai (蔡明璋) said the Kaohsiung mall could generate NT$4.5 billion sales a year, with more than 80 percent of its 300 tenancies already filled.
Various international casual wear brands, such as Timberland, Nautica and Napapijri, as well as sportswear brands including Nike, Adidas and Under Armour, are set to launch stores in the mall, Tsai added.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to