Chlitina Holding Ltd (麗豐), which sells cosmetics and skincare products under the Chlitina brand, expects revenue to increase 20 percent this year on the back of a growing Chinese market.
The company, which entered China in 1997, had 4,698 salon stores across Taiwan, China and Vietnam as of the end of last month, with China operations accounting for 95 percent of its revenue last year.
“We opened more than 100 stores in the first four months of this year, and we plan to launch 400 to 500 new stores this year,” Chlitina investor relations director Anita Hu (胡安榕) told an investors’ meeting in Taipei on Thursday.
The company generates a majority of its revenue from selling products to its franchise stores.
Its e-commerce platform, Beauty Health Happiness (新美力), is another source of revenue, while sub-brands RnD (璦緹) and Up Lider (雅樸麗德) offer manicures, pedicures and eyelash services, as well as aesthetic medicine products.
“To distinguish us from other cosmetic chain stores, we aim to build a beauty industry by offering cosmetics and aesthetic medicine services,” Hu said.
The company expects to open two aesthetic medicine centers in Shanghai and one in Nanjing by October.
Consolidated revenue in the first four months grew 18.33 percent to NT$1.61 billion (US$51.4 million), compared with NT$1.36 billion in the same period last year, the company said.
Chlitina’s net profit increased 21.63 percent annually to NT$379.55 million in the first quarter, compared with NT$312.05 million a year earlier.
Chlitina chief financial officer Eric Yeh (葉建志) attributed the increase to a government subsidy of 22.44 million yuan (US$3.24 million) that Beijing provides to companies to develop chain store businesses, as well as lower operating expenses last quarter from a year earlier, when it spent NT$500 million on a new office in Shanghai, he said.
However, the amount of the subsidy changes according to companies’ pace of revenue growth, Yeh said.
The subsidy program is expected to continue through 2023, he said.
Earnings per share increased from NT$3.97 to a record NT$4.77 over the same period, while gross margin climbed by 2.32 percentage points to 83.54 percent.
Franchise stores reported a higher gross margin of 84 percent for last quarter, compared with 72 percent for the e-commerce business and 48 percent for aesthe thetic medicine business, the company said.
The company said it plans to distribute a cash dividend of NT$12 per share this year, the same as last year.
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