Taipei 101, the nation’s tallest skyscraper and a top tourist attraction, reported net income of NT$2.13 billion (US$73.1 million) last year, flat from the previous year, with earnings of NT$1.45 per share.
Despite a continued decline in Chinese tourists, a strategy to expand and diversify sources of revenue paid off, said officials from Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓), the building’s owner.
“The performance was not easy to achieve, as the industry failed to show improvement, while operation and maintenance costs picked up,” TFCC president Chen Shih-ming (陳世明) said in a statement after a board meeting on Wednesday last week to approve the results.
Tourism and retail sales generated two-thirds of overall revenue, Chen said.
The number of Chinese visitors plunged 22 percent to 2.73 million last year, after sliding 16 percent in 2016, government data showed.
Many Chinese tourists consider Taipei 101 a must-see spot in Taiwan, supporting revenue at the high-rise’s observatory, while rental income held relatively stable, as the building remains an international landmark even after several other upscale office spaces entered the market.
The board made no mention of potential board reshuffles nor did it place the issue on its next agenda, as Japan’s Itochu Corp’s acquisition of a 37.17 percent stake in the building from Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) has yet to go through, TFCC officials said.
Food conglomerate Ting Hsin a number of years ago decided to offload holdings in Taipei 101 in the face of a public outcry over a spate of foods safety scandals at the company.
TFCC has won an intellectual property patent for its system streamlining tax returns for foreign visitors, company chairman Chou Te-yu (周德宇) said.
The company in 2015 set up a team to study visitors’ behavior, and with help of big data and financial technology developed an application to increase the ease and convenience of shopping, Chou 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],”
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