Rebar maker Feng Hsin Steel Co (豐興鋼鐵) on Thursday last week reported its highest annual pretax income since the global financial crisis in 2008, aided by Beijing’s efforts to eliminate low-end products and a sound recovery in the global economy.
Unaudited pretax income was NT$3.227 billion (US$110.1 million) last year, up 46.91 percent from NT$2.196 billion the previous year, a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
Based on the company’s 581.6 million shares, Feng Hsin’s pretax earnings per share were NT$5.55 last year, the highest in 10 years.
Consolidated revenue totaled NT$24.74 billion last year, an increase of 18.2 percent from 2016, company data showed.
The robust results reinforced the company’s optimistic outlook for this year.
It expects earnings to increase further this year on contributions from the new production lines, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported on Friday last week.
Rebar is a raw material for reinforced concrete used in the construction industry.
The Taichung-based company spent NT$2.466 billion in 2016 on the construction of a new plant, which has an annual capacity of 600,000 to 700,000 tonnes and is expected to start operations after the Lunar New Year holiday, the newspaper said.
Feng Hsin expects the new plant’s upgraded manufacturing process to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and lower production costs, supporting a further growth in profit, the report said.
Founded in 1969, Feng Hsin is the nation’s leading electric arc furnace steel producer.
Its products include angle steel, channel steel, steel flats, steel bars, special steel, bar steel and steel rods.
Separately, Feng Hsin yesterday announced that it is to lower its price by NT$200 per tonne for rebar products to NT$17,200, its third consecutive weekly price cut, while leaving its scrap buying prices unchanged at NT$9,600 per tonne, the Chinese-language China Times reported, citing company sources.
Feng Hsin shares spent most of last year in consolidation mode as demand for the company’s products bottomed out from a low base in 2016.
The shares closed 0.65 percent lower at NT$61 in Taipei trading yesterday, having increased 17.5 percent from Dec. 19 last year, when they traded at NT$51.9, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
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