Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the nation’s largest car distributor, yesterday gave an optimistic outlook for its Lexus models, thanks to better-than-expected demand for the NX series in the domestic market.
“Hotai has received orders for 2,000 units of the NX luxury compact crossover since last month,” company president Justin Su (蘇純興) told reporters at a launch event for the Lexus LS model in Taipei, attributing the strong buying interest to the booming local stock market.
In light of rising customer demand, the company has set a target of selling 16,000 Lexus cars next year, up from about 15,000 this year, he said.
Hotai also aims to sell 1,000 Lexus LS cars, which has a starting price of NT$4.57 million (US$152,029), over the coming year, it said.
Despite a positive outlook for Lexus, Su gave relatively conservative guidance on Hotai’s earnings performance for the whole of this year, given the firm’s latest financial results.
Hotai’s net profit in the first three quarters of this year totaled NT$7.77 billion, a 5.13 percent decline from NT$8.19 billion a year earlier, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
That translated into earnings of NT$14.23 per share, down from NT$15 per share a year earlier, with sales falling 0.4 percent from NT$113 billion to NT$112.55 billion on an annual basis.
The decline came after two of the company’s most popular low-priced models, Innova and Wish, were discontinued in the nation last year, a Hotai official said.
In related news, Hotai’s local peer, Ford Lio Ho Motor Co (福特六和), a joint venture between US automaker Ford and the Lio Ho Group (六和集團), yesterday introduced its Escort compact cars to local customers as part of the firm’s NT$4 billion project to manufacture the Escort series and upgrade its production processes in Taiwan over the next five years.
The Taiwanese market still plays an important role in Ford’s operations in the Asia-Pacific region, despite the US brand’s withdrawal from Japan and Indonesia, Ford Lio Ho president Tim Ju (朱忠園) told a media gathering.
Asked about future plans, Ju said Ford Lio Ho has been working on the research and development of cars that have low-displacement engines to meet the government’s emission standards.
The firm would also consider developing electric cars if the government puts forward a more deliberate policy for electric vehicles, he said, adding that the issue of a lack of charging infrastructure has yet to be resolved.
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],”
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
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