Shoe adhesive manufacturer Nan Pao Resins Chemical Co Ltd (南寶) expects to achieve double-digit growth in revenue this year, the company said on Wednesday.
The driving forces behind its optimistic outlook include steady raw material prices and rising demand for adhesives for the next year’s Tokyo Olympics, Nan Pao said.
“Demand for shoe materials is high in the year before an Olympic Games and we have seen clear order momentum in the first quarter,” Nan Pao president Hsu Ming-hsien (許明現) said.
As making shoe adhesives is in the upper stream of the sportswear industry, Nan Pao is one of the companies that can be affected at an early stage by orders from brand vendors that have Olympics-related contracts, he said.
Nan Pao’s major shoe adhesive clients include Nike Inc and Adidas AG.
Orders for adhesives have grown 3 to 5 percent from a year earlier and the company expects more to come as the Tokyo Games draw nearer, it said.
Nan Pao reported NT$16.02 billion (US$518.4 million) in revenue for last year, up 9.69 percent from a year earlier.
First-quarter revenue increased 7.26 percent year-on-year to NT$3.76 billion from NT$3.51 billion.
Shoe adhesives contributed 43 percent to the company’s total revenue last year, specialty adhesives — including for diapers — accounted for 31 percent and paints contributed 11 percent, company data showed.
Nan Pao also develops carbon fiber products, Hsu said.
The company has set up a line that can produce 75,000m2 of carbon fiber resin per month, he said.
The carbon fiber is for two notebook computer manufacturers to make laptop cases, which are expected to contribute to Nan Pao’s revenue in the second half of the year, he said.
As demand for lightweight parts used in electric and hybrid vehicles grows, the company has been researching use of carbon fiber in inner doors and B-pillars, as new products could help increase revenue in the third quarter, he said.
Nan Pao expects recovering crude oil prices to have a limited effect on its bottom line this year, although falling oil prices last year helped lower costs for raw materials and supported its earnings, Hsu said.
The firm posted net profit of NT$672.78 million for last year, down from NT$881.87 million in 2017, with earnings per share falling from NT$8.22 to NT$6.15.
Nan Pao shares yesterday closed up 0.65 percent at NT$154 in Taipei trading.
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],”