Taiwan’s largest papermaking conglomerate, YFY Inc (永豐餘控股), yesterday provided a reserved outlook on earnings growth this year in light of challenging macroeconomic conditions and fluctuations in global material prices.
“We are still facing many challenges this year,” company chairman and chief executive officer Felix Ho (何奕達) said at an annual shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, citing Brexit and the US’ trade policy as political uncertainties.
Price swings in the raw materials market would also inevitably increase production costs, Ho said.
Photo: Lee Ching-hui, Taipei Times
Last year as a whole, YFY reported net profit of NT$126.1 million (US$4.19 million), a 74.9 percent plunge from NT$501.9 million a year earlier, while earnings per share decreased from NT$0.3 to NT$0.08, dragged down by foreign-exchange losses of nearly NT$93 million over the period.
Revenue last year edged down 0.4 percent annually to NT$63.35 billion, the company said in a statement.
Even though shareholders approved a proposal not to distribute cash dividends for last year and save the earnings for capacity expansion needs, some of them voiced concern at the meeting about weakening profitability compared with major domestic competitors Cheng Loong Corp (正隆紙業) and Long Chen Paper Co (榮成紙業).
“Our financial figures should not be directly compared with other papermakers, as YFY is a holding company with many reinvestment businesses,” Ho told shareholders.
Last year was really difficult for YFY, he said, primary attributing the sluggish performance to ongoing capacity adjustment for the company’s industrial paper business and the sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar.
Company data showed that industrial paper products were the largest revenue contributor last year, accounting for 27.5 percent of overall sales, while its pulp business and household paper took up 22.9 percent and 14.3 percent respectively.
To improve profitability in industrial paper sector, a new machine at its plant in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District (新屋) started trial operations in the first quarter, the firm said.
The new machine is expected to raise the company’s production capacity of industrial paper from nearly 720,000 tonnes per year to 750,000 tonnes per year, YFY said.
A cogeneration system is to be built at the Xinwu plant to reduce emissions costs generated during the papermaking process, the company said.
Alongside the company’s core business of paper manufacturing, one of YFY’s most profitable reinvestment units, Shin Foong Specialty and Applied Materials Co Ltd (申豐), is to debut on the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Wednesday next week, with an initial public offering price of NT$68 per share.
Shin Foong, which mainly produces synthetic latex for global customers, has a paid-in capital of NT$943 million.
It plans to raise NT$99.19 million through the issuance of 9.919 million shares for the main bourse listing, Shin Foong data showed.
YFY shares were unchanged at NT$10.15 in Taipei trading yesterday, underperforming the broader market, which edged up 0.04 percent.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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