Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥), the nation’s leading cement maker, posted net profit of NT$4.95 billion (US$164.02 million) for the first three quarters of this year, up 8.79 percent from NT$4.55 billion in the same period the previous year, boosted by price increases in China.
That translated into earnings of per share of NT$1.34, up from NT$1.23 per share the previous year, company data showed.
From January through September, cumulative revenue rose 9.4 percent to NT$68.95 billion from NT$63.02 billion the previous year.
Operating margin rose to 13.41 percent from 12.75 percent.
The company’s cement business has seen steady growth in profit, offsetting the erosion from its electricity business, which has seen a downward trend, Taiwan Cement president John Li (李鐘培) told an investors’ conference in Taipei yesterday.
Taiwan Cement operates Ho-Ping Power Co (和平電廠).
The cement business generated a profit of NT$5.86 billion in the first three quarters of this year, up 197 percent from NT$1.97 billion in the same period last year, while earnings from Ho-Ping Power plunged 41.9 percent year-on-year to NT$3.53 billion from NT$6.08 billion.
Li attributed the strong performance in the cement business to rising prices in China’s cement manufacturing hubs, such as Guangdong and Guangxi provinces.
Taiwan Cement, which operates its Chinese business through Hong Kong-listed TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團), is the seventh-largest cement maker by capacity in China.
Taiwan Cement’s product prices in Guangdong Province surged 23.6 percent to 340 yuan (US$51.20) per tonne in September, compared with 275 yuan per tonne the previous year.
The upward trend in cement prices is in the company’s favor and indicate that Beijing’s curbs on cement supply have begun to bear fruit, Li said.
Taiwan Cement is expected to benefit from the Chinese government’s measures to rein in cement capacity expansion, as the policy has mainly weighed on smaller companies that suffer from high energy consumption.
The company also outlined its expansion plans for the coming year, saying that its investments would focus on “green” energy and developing tire recycling technologies.
“Taiwan Cement aims to become an eco-solutions provider,” Taiwan Cement chairman Nelson Chang (張安平) told reporters, citing the idea of the circular economy as the key to the firm’s future.
The 71-year-old company said it has been working on several “green” energy projects for years, including an onshore wind farm at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (彰濱工業區), but declined to elaborate on its budget.
Taiwan Cement’s ongoing efforts to delist TCC International from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange would be completed next week, TCC International managing director Jason Koo (辜公怡) said.
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