Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產) shares yesterday rose 1.93 percent in Taipei compared with the broader market’s 0.07 percent fall after the company said it expects earnings growth in the second half of the year to be driven by non-operating gains.
The firm, which sells Nissan-branded and Infinity-branded vehicles, plans to raise its shareholding in China’s Guangzhou Fengshen Automotive Co (廣州風神) from 40 percent to 42.69 percent in the third quarter, it said on Tuesday.
The company is also proposing to restructure its Chinese ventures from five to two to achieve management efficiency and higher gross margin, it said.
“We expect this year’s net income will outperform last year, as we increase our shareholding in Guangzhou Fengshen, whose utilization rate has been 100 percent since last year, while labor and material costs remain steady,” Yulon Nissan president Leman Lee (李振成) told an investors’ conference.
The non-operating gains from its restructuring effort are expected to contribute about NT$1 in earnings per share this year, Lee said.
Yulon Nissan shares yesterday closed at NT$264, having risen 15.54 percent this year.
The firm sold 11,697 vehicles in Taiwan during the first four months of the year, down 6.6 percent year-on-year, while cumulative revenue slightly decreased 0.33 percent to NT$10.81 billion (US$342.8 million).
The Nissan Kicks sport utility vehicle has been the company’s main sales driver so far this year, Lee said, adding that sales are expected to improve when the new Nissan Leaf electric vehicle hits the market in the third quarter.
“This year, we aim to sell 40,000 vehicles, or a market share of 9.2 percent,” Lee said. “We plan to increase sales in the second half by expanding our marketing channels.”
The firm sold 36,708 vehicles last year, or a market share of 8.4 percent, company data showed.
However, the company said the nation’s overall auto market would be flat this year after total vehicle sales declined 12.9 percent year-on-year in the first four months.
As the US-China trade dispute lingers, Yulon Nissan expects its vehicle sales in China to be flat from the previous year at 1.29 million units, vice president Chung Wen-chuan (鐘文川) said.
The firm posted first-quarter net income of NT$1.51 billion, up 36.28 percent from NT$1.11 billion a year earlier, or earnings per share of NT$5.05.
Gross margin dipped 2.87 percentage points to 17.01 percent.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six