RETAIL
PCSC adds new products
President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), the operator of the nation’s largest convenience store chain, yesterday launched two new products created by Japanese ramen restaurant operator Menya Itto, as part of its effort to boost its fresh food sales. PCSC is to start selling cold noodles with sesame-flavored dipping sauce, as well as Japanese-style fried rice, at its nearly 5,200 7-Eleven stores nationwide by the end of this month, the company said in a statement. PCSC has set a goal of increasing the sales contribution of its fresh food segment from 17.6 percent last year to 20 percent by 2020, it said.
BANKING
Gcoin findings favorable
E.Sun Commercial Bank’s (玉山銀行) Innovation Lab yesterday announced favorable findings from its three-month experiment with National Taiwan University’s (NTU) open source digital currency Gcoin, the reward points management solution Pointree (集點數) and Blink Wallet, a digital wallet favored by students. The experiment tested the feasibility of spending reward points at 32 eateries on the NTU campus. Participating eateries found that blockchain helped to reduce the time required for weekly bookkeeping by two hours. However, the lender concluded that blockchain is not suitable for high-frequency, low-value transactions, as it takes between five and seven seconds to complete a transaction at the point of sale, which is 50 percent longer than existing mobile payment systems.
APPAREL
TOPBI net profit soars
China-focused TOPBI International Holdings Ltd (淘帝國際控股) yesterday posted a 38.97 percent annual increase in net profit of NT$215.31 million (US$7.23 million) for the first quarter which the company attributed to its multichannel retailing strategy. Earnings per share were NT$2.76, up from NT$2.01 per share a year earlier. Revenue was NT$1.24 billion, a 14.1 percent year-on-year increase from NT$1.09 billion, the company said in a statement. TOPBI, which has 1,534 stores in China, has teamed up with major e-commerce platforms, such as TMall (天貓) and Jingdong Mall (京東), to sell its products.
FOOTWEAR
Fulgent Sun sales decline
Fulgent Sun International Holding Co Ltd (鈺齊國際) yesterday reported revenue of NT$702.69 million for last month, representing a 26.62 percent year-on-year increase. From January through last month, accumulated sales totaled NT$2.87 billion, a 1.6 percent decline compared with the same period last year, the company said in a statement. However, the pace of decline has narrowed from the first three months’ 8.25 percent, company data showed. Fulgent Sun, which supplies products to more than 40 customers, gave a positive outlook for this quarter as it enters its peak season.
AUTOMAKERS
Yulon secures NT$10bn loan
Yulon Group (裕隆集團) yesterday secured a NT$10 billion syndicated loan from eight banks to fund a property development project in New Taipei City’s Xindian District (新店). The project spans 99,000m2 that used to be the automaker’s manufacturing plant and is expected to be completed in 2022. The group plans to build residential and commercial properties. Analysts have said that the rental income would contribute NT$0.5 to earnings per share each year, while sales of residential units are expected to raise between NT$50 billion and NT$60 billion.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”