Taichung-headquartered shoe supplier Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業) on Tuesday reported that its profit last quarter grew year-on-year, thanks to increased revenue contribution from its retail business.
Pou Chen, the world’s largest branded athletic and casual footwear maker, reported a 25.7 percent annual increase in net income to NT$2.05 billion (US$68.58 million) over the January-to-March period, compared with NT$1.63 billion during the same period last year.
The company saw its first-quarter revenue rise 2.6 percent annually to NT$67.26 billion from NT$65.57 billion, with earnings per share increasing to NT$0.69 from NT$0.55.
Gross margin was 25.7 percent last quarter, improving from 25.5 percent a year earlier, it said in a statement.
Pou Chen attributed the improvement in its bottom-line figures to the significant growth of its retail unit, which saw sales last quarter jump 33.5 percent annually to NT$28.07 billion.
The retail business accounted for 41.7 percent of the company’s total sales in the quarter, up from 32.1 percent during same period last year, while shoe manufacturing comprised about 58 percent, sliding from the 67.5 percent it contributed a year earlier.
Pou Chen, which produces more than 300 million pairs of shoes every year, operates its retail business in China through a Hong Kong-listed subsidiary, Pou Sheng International Ltd (寶勝國際), which as of the end of last year operated 8,778 stores.
As Pou Sheng plans a net increase of 250 to 300 stores this year and the sales rate for its stores is expected to retain annual growth of 5 percent, its contribution would still be a great catalyst to the parent company’s earnings momentum, Taishin Securities Investment Advisory Co (台新投顧) analyst Chang Yu-hua (張鈺驊) said in a note published ahead of the data release.
At a meeting last month, Pou Chen’s plan to privatize Pou Sheng was voted down by its shareholders.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts