PChome Online Inc (網路家庭), the nation’s largest online shopping portal operator, yesterday reported annual revenue growth of 16.9 percent or NT$2.36 billion (US$77.7 million) last month, driven by robust shopping ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Orders rose as much as 22.3 percent last month from the same time a year earlier, the company said.
“Purchases ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Double Ten National Day holiday supported the strong revenue performance last month,” the company said in a statement.
PChome said the number of orders for gift boxes, such as pineapple cakes and pork jerky, rose more than 50 percent annually last month.
Shipments of outdoor barbecue, camping and picnicking products doubled last month from a year earlier, the company added.
PChome said orders placed from the nation’s outlying islands also doubled from a year earlier, boosted by the company’s new policy announced in August to halve delivery costs to the islands.
The monthly result brought PChome’s accumulative sales to NT$7.29 billion in the third quarter of the year, the company’s highest quarterly revenue since it was listed on the Taipei Exchange in 2005, company data showed.
The figure represented a year-on-year increase of 12.84 percent from last year’s NT$6.46 billion for the same period, and a 4.74 percent increase from the prior quarter’s NT$6.96 billion, PChome data showed.
PChome’s combined revenue in the first nine months of this year jumped by 10.34 percent to NT$21.08 billion, compared with the NT$19.1 billion from the same period last year, the data showed.
Looking ahead, PChome said it estimates that its revenue performance this quarter will outpace the last quarter, based on planned promotions in the upcoming months, such as a 60 percent discount on selected products.
The company said it also has high hopes for the remainder of the year, as it will host PChome’s 11th anniversary shopping event from the beginning of next month and year-end promotions in December.
PChome’s accumulative net profits totaled NT$340.2 million in the first half of this year, which plunged 24.38 percent from NT$449.94 million a year earlier, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
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