Tire maker Cheng Shin Rubber Industry Co (正新橡膠), which sells its products under the Maxxis brand, said its new plant in India is to start production in June, as it eyes business opportunities in the region.
New motorcycle sales in India are expected to reach about 18 million units this year, company vice president Liao Cheng-yao (廖正耀) told an investors’ conference earlier this month.
With an annual capacity of 6 million motorcycle tires, the plant in India’s Gujarat Province will mainly produce tires for its Japanese customers.
Cheng Shin, the world’s 10th-largest tire manufacturer, said the Indian plant could break even in three years.
The company is also expanding in Indonesia, but plans for a new motorcycle tire plant to start operating in the third quarter might be delayed as it is still awaiting permission from local authorities.
The plant, which is based in West Java’s Greenland International Industrial Center, will have an annual capacity of 6 million tires, Cheng Shin said.
The two ongoing expansion projects are expected to raise the revenue contribution of motorcycle tires, which accounted for 13.9 percent of sales last year, the firm said, without elaborating.
Car tires remained Cheng Shin’s main source of revenue last year, accounting for 44.4 percent of its total sales, while truck tires contributed 17 percent, company data showed.
The Changhua-based company — the nation’s largest tire maker — operates 10 plants in Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Thailand.
Cheng Shin’s board of directors yesterday approved plans to distribute cash dividends of NT$3 per share, which translate into a payout ratio of 73.3 percent, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The company posted a net profit of NT$13.25 billion (US$439.5 million), or NT$4.09 per share, last year, up 3.7 percent from previous year, while sales edged up 0.56 percent to NT$117.39 billion, company data showed.
Based on Cheng Shin’s stock price, which closed at NT$62.10 yesterday, the proposed cash dividend would translate into a dividend yield of 4.83 percent.
The tire manufacturer is to hold its annual shareholders’ meeting at the company’s headquarters on June 15.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts