La Kaffa International Co (六角國際), which owns bubble tea brand Chatime (日出茶太) and has extended its reach to Australia, is planning to list shares of its subsidiary on the Australian stock market in the third quarter of next year.
La Kaffa chairman Henry Wang (王耀輝) on Thursday said that subsidiary Infinite Plus Pty Ltd, in which La Kaffa has a 55 percent stake, will file an application to list with Australian securities authorities by the end of the second quarter next year.
Chatime, which was founded by Wang in 2005, has been in the Australian market since 2009 and with sales on the rise, he said that the unit is looking to raise funds to finance growth.
If the listing plan proceeds as expected, La Kaffa will become the first food and beverage enterprise owned by a Taiwanese to launch a stock listing in Australia.
So far this year, Chatime has added 31 new outlets in Australia, bringing its number of outlets there to 100.
About 70 percent of its Australian stores are in department stores, shopping malls or at tourist attractions, and 90 percent of the outlets are run under franchising contracts, while 10 percent are directly owned by Infinite Plus.
Infinite Plus managing director Chao Chen (趙晨) said that the number of Chatime outlets in Australia is expected to increase to 109 this year and 149 next year.
The number would expand to 200 by the end of 2021 and 250 in the longer term, Chao said.
Infinite Plus had consolidated sales of about NT$530 million (US$17.18 million) last year, up 20 percent from a year earlier, the company said.
In the first nine months of this year, consolidated sales totaled NT$420 million and the figure should reach NT$600 million for the full year, which would be up more than 13 percent from last year because of its growing number of outlets.
Revenue for next year is expected to grow 25 percent to about NT$780 million, it said.
Wang said La Kaffa in July set up a second logistics center in Melbourne, Australia, to supplement its first in Sydney and help Chatime cut delivery times and operating costs.
Chatime has more than 700 outlets in 38 countries, including 260 in Indonesia, more than 70 in the Philippines and 39 in Malaysia, making Southeast Asia one of the brand’s major sales drivers.
It expects to add another 120 to 150 stores in the three nations next year.
The company also plans to use Australia as a base to expand its business in New Zealand, where it has four outlets and expects to increase its network to 30 stores by the end of 2021.
Chatime in July opened a store outside the Louvre, one of the most popular tourist attractions in France, as part of efforts to expand its global presence.
La Kaffa posted earnings per share of NT$3 for the first nine months of the year, compared with NT$3.43 in the same period last year.
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