Supermarkets in Taiwan reported NT$165.4 billion (US$5.36 billion) in combined revenue for the first nine months of the year at 2,201 stores, both numbers being records, a report released by the Ministry of Economic Affairs on Thursday showed.
From January to September, revenue at supermarkets saw a 5.9 percent increase year-on-year, higher than the annual growth rates at department stores and hypermarkets of 2.87 percent and 3.77 percent respectively, but lower than the rise of 6.7 percent at convenience stores, the report said.
Supermarkets have posted higher annual revenue than hypermarkets since 2016 and the gap has increased in the past two years, the ministry said.
In the first nine months, supermarkets’ revenues outdid hypermarkets by NT$10.8 billion, it said.
“Supermarkets provide merchandise in smaller sizes or lower volumes than goods of the same kind in hypermarkets, which consumers tend to prefer as the number of small families increases,” Department of Statistics Section Chief Tsai Mei-chuan (蔡美娟) told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
Even though supermarket revenue has placed third since 2016, trailing convenience stores and department stores, it has shown stable, strong growth in recent years, Tsai said, adding that supermarket revenue grew by 7.2 percent annually on average from 2013 to last year, compared with the increase for hypermarkets, department stores and convenience stores, which was less than 4 percent.
With food and beverages comprising 66.8 percent of their overall sales, supermarkets sell “necessity goods,” so their revenue can keep rising stably, unaffected by business cycles, while economic downturns easily affect department stores, she said, adding that supermarkets saw annual revenues surpass NT$200 billion for the first time last year and are likely to have record sales again this year.
The net increase of supermarket outlets was 38 as of Sept. 30, the report said.
With 934 outlets, Pxmart (全聯) remained the leader in the segment, followed by Simple Mart (美廉社) with 641 stores and Wellcome Supermarket (頂好超市) with 226 stores, it said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS