The Chinese owner of Volvo Car Corp said full-year profit at its local automaking unit probably doubled, topping analysts’ estimates and allowing billionaire founder Li Shufu (李書福) to turn his focus to another major acquisition in Sweden.
Net income last year at Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd (吉利汽車) increased “around 100 percent” from 5.11 billion yuan (US$783.5 million at the current exchange rate) in 2016, the Hong Kong-listed unit of Li’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co (浙江吉利) said on Tuesday in an exchange filing.
That would exceed the 9.46 billion yuan average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 36 analysts.
The maker of Emgrand sedans is among automakers getting a boost in the world’s biggest auto market, where sales rose to a record for a 27th consecutive year.
Geely forecast deliveries will rise 27 percent to 1.58 million units this year after a surge in demand last year, which might place the company as the biggest-selling domestic brand in China, analysts said.
Shares of the company yesterday fell as much as 2.2 percent in Hong Kong after more than tripling last year.
Last month, parent company Zhejiang Geely Holding announced that it would purchase a stake in Swedish truckmaker AB Volvo. The parent already owns the Volvo Car nameplate after buying it from Ford Motor Co.
In 2013, Zhejiang Geely agreed to purchase Manganese Bronze Holdings PLC, rescuing the maker of London’s iconic black taxis after the UK automaker entered administration.
Li is turning his attention to the Swedish company’s heavy vehicles in a bid to bulk up outside China. The stake would mark Hangzhou, China-based Geely’s first foray into the heavy truck segment.
In a New Year message, Li told employees: “2017 has been an extraordinary and memorable year, in which we have taken significant steps forward on several fronts.”
“The brands under Geely Holding Group have made exceptional progress,” he added.
Li started out making refrigerator parts and later turned a bankrupt state-owned manufacturer into China’s biggest privately owned automaker. He cemented his reputation as a savvy dealmaker after reviving Volvo Car in the face of widespread industry skepticism following the purchase from Ford in 2010.
The premium Volvo brand is going to help Geely outperform peers in the future, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steve Man said.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
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