Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom carrier, saw its net profit grow at an annual rate of 6 percent to NT$10.15 billion (US$336 million) last quarter, widely beating market expectations, due mainly to declining handset subsidies and operating costs.
That translated into earnings per share of NT$1.31 for the third quarter, the company said on Tuesday.
Annual growth was supported by strong earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), which climbed 3.3 percent year-on-year to NT$6.62 billion last quarter and marked the first annual growth since the second quarter of last year, the company said.
Operating costs and expenses fell by 7.2 percent annually during the quarter, the company said.
“Chunghwa Telecom’s third-quarter net income came above our estimate,” Credit Suisse Group AG analyst Varun Ahuja said in a report on Wednesday, citing strong EBITDA and lower-than-expected operating expenses.
Ahuja forecast NT$9.59 billion in quarterly profit for the company.
However, the company continued to see a downward spiral in service revenue last quarter, down 3.6 percent year-on-year to NT$56.42 billion, with more revenue setbacks in its international fixed and domestic fixed segments, down 19.8 percent and 5.5 percent year-on-year respectively.
However, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) believes there is a bright spot.
With continuing cutbacks in phone subsidies, Chunghwa Telecom may see profit margins stay flat this quarter from last quarter, when Apple Inc’s new iPhone X hits local stores next month, Yuanta analyst Chen Chuan-chuan (陳娟娟) said in a report on Thursday.
Local telecom companies offered a NT$1,000 subsidy for subscribers to purchase an iPhone 8, less than the subsidy offered for the iPhone 7, Chen said, adding that Chunghwa Telecom is likely to offer a similar NT$1,000 subsidy for the premium iPhone X.
Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s No. 2 telecom company, saw its net profit fall 0.75 percent annually to NT$3.96 billion last quarter, which also surpassed Ahuja’s estimate of NT$3.75 billion, primarily due to lower tax expenses.
The company’s service revenue last quarter was NT$24.16 billion, little changed from NT$23.84 billion made during the same period last year, but down 6 percent from the prior quarter because of lower contributions of revenue from roaming charges from Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信).
Meanwhile, Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the third-largest telecom, posted an 11 percent annual decline in net profit for last quarter at NT$2.85 billion, while revenue fell 1.9 percent to NT$22.86 billion, the company said earlier this week.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained