Hota Industrial Manufacturing Co (和大工業), which supplies automotive components to Tesla Inc, is expected to see net income grow further this year, benefiting from Tesla’s launch of a new electric car, the Model 3, Daiwa Capital Markets Inc said last week.
Tesla is to begin production of its lower-priced Model 3 compact sedan in the middle of this year and start shipments next year, the US-based company’s Web site showed.
“Hota is expected to receive at least a 60 percent order allocation for the Model 3 and remain the sole components supplier for the Model S and the Model X,” Daiwa analyst Helen Chien (簡君穎) said in a report last week.
Hota is expected to benefit from an increase in orders from its major clients this year, including BorgWarner Inc and Punch Powertrain NV, the report said.
Hota’s earnings per share are forecast to rise to NT$6.15 this year, compared with last year’s NT$4.78, Daiwa said.
However, gross margin might erode due to the higher revenue contribution of the less expensive Model 3, which has a lower margin compared with other Tesla vehicles, Chien said, without providing additional details.
In the first three quarters of last year, Hota’s gross margin improved slightly from 35.38 percent to 35.76 percent, company data showed.
In a bid to meet increasing demand from its international clients, Hota is building automated production lines at Chiayi Dapumei Precision Machinery Park (嘉義大埔美精密機械園區).
Seven new automated and “intelligent” production lines in Chiayi County are scheduled to begin production by the end of this year, Hota said.
The company is also seeking to build a plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Industrial Park (銅鑼科學園區) to further expand capacity, the Chinese-language Economic Daily reported last week.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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