Garment manufacturer Quang Viet Enterprise Co (QVE, 廣越) yesterday raised its shipment forecast for this year from 10 million units to 10.5 million units, on the back of better-than-expected demand from its major customers.
“The figure is nearly 15 percent higher than last year’s 9.1 million units,” a Quang Viet investor relations official said by telephone.
The official, who declined to be named, said that sales growth this year is mainly being propelled by existing clients, including Adidas, Nike and Patagonia.
The Taipei-based company manufactures down jackets, as well as PrimaLoft and ThermoBall jackets.
Adidas remained its biggest customer last year, accounting for 32 percent of overall sales, company data showed.
Quant Viet has also secured new orders from other brands, such as Aigle, Nautica and Converse, the official said.
Cumulative sales in the first two months of the year fell 5 percent to NT$479.98 million (US$15.82 million) from a year earlier, as customers have yet to finish inventory digestion, the company said.
However, the company expects sales to pick up in the second quarter — a high season for down jacket manufacturers, the official said.
“We have been expanding capacity to satisfy customers’ demand for several years,” the official said, adding that 15 new production lines at its plant in Long An Province, Vietnam, is to start operations next week.
Another 15 new production lines at its factory in Vietnam’s Tien Giang Province are to begin production by the end of this year, the company said.
Combined with other factories in Vietnam and China, Quang Viet operates a total of 305 production lines, which can turn out 950,000 garments per month, company data showed.
Net profit for last year plunged 34.5 percent from a year earlier to NT$698.3 million, or earnings per share of NT$7.41, on sales of NT$9.04 billion, down 3.5 percent, the company said, attributing the results to weak sentiment in the global garment industry.
The company’s board has approved a proposal to distribute cash dividends of NT$6.2 per share, which translates into a payout ratio of 84 percent.
Shares of Quang Viet rose 3.32 percent to close at NT$171 in Taipei trading. The stock has increased 18.75 percent so far this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by