Wistron Corp (緯創) is to expand the operational scope of its medical services in China and after-sales services in India this year, as part of the company’s efforts to accelerate the growth of its new businesses, a company executive said yesterday.
“We recently established a medical service holding company and inked a cooperation framework with the Chongqing City Government in China,” Wistron president Robert Huang (黃柏漙) told reporters after the company’s annual general meeting in Taipei.
The medical service holding company, with paid-in capital of NT$600 million (US$18.5 million), helps Taiwanese and foreign medical equipment and device suppliers handle verifications and examinations in the Chinese medical market, Huang said.
The company has also served clients in Chongqing, while working with Wistron independent board director John Hsuan (宣明智) on a few projects in the biomedical field, Huang said, without elaborating.
Hsuan is the honorary vice chairman of United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) and is also the founder and chairman of Meridigen Biotech Co Ltd (宣捷生物科技). The technology industry heavyweight has been investing in the biotechnology sector in the Chinese medical market for years.
As for its after-sales service, Huang said Wistron plans to expand the scope of its services in India from PC and servers to Internet-of-Things devices.
“We used to focus on PC-related products, but would like to extend our reach to after-sales services,” he said.
The company’s major focuses this year are to speed up the growth of its service businesses and enhance the competitiveness of its core businesses, such as PCs, servers and smartphones, Huang said.
Wistron’s manufacturing plant in India, which has formed a partnership with India’s Optiemus Infracom Ltd, will start to ship smartphones for Taiwanese, Indian and Chinese vendors next month with an initial annual production capacity of 4 million units, he said.
Wistron might expand its investment in India next year by seeking a location for a new smartphone manufacturing plant, but that would depend on the Indian government’s tax policy plans, he said.
Smartphone and server segments would be the main growth drivers for Wistron’s operations in the second half of this year, Huang said, forecasting that smartphone shipments would hit their peak in the final quarter of this year, after a major client launches new handsets.
Thanks to growing orders and expanding market shares, Wistron expects its server shipments to climb by a double-digit percentage from last year’s results, he said.
Overall, Huang said Wistron’s revenue and profit for this year could increase from last year.
Shareholders approved Wistron’s proposal to distribute cash dividends of NT$1.2 per share and a stock dividend of 0.3 percent per share, based on last year’s earnings per share of NT$0.55 plus undistributed earnings.
That translates into a dividend yield of 6.92 percent, based on Wistron’s closing share price of NT$21.65 in Taipei trading yesterday.
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