Golden Friends Corp (崇友), one of the nation’s leading suppliers of elevators and escalators, on Tuesday said that it expects revenue to increase this year amid growing demand for elevators, and a stable maintenance and repair business.
In particular, increasing demand from high-rise buildings would be a major driving force for revenue growth, it said.
“We expect to achieve double-digit percentage growth in orders for high-speed elevators this year,” Golden Friends spokesperson Lin Hung-peng (林鴻鵬) told an investors’ conference.
Demand for high-end elevators are expected to increase as the number of high-rises continues to grow and the number of elevators per building also increases, the company said.
Shipments of its high-end Genesis (堅尼西斯) brand elevator series have grown an average 10 percent annually since 2015, Lin said, adding that the models in the series have higher margins than the company’s other products.
Another growth driver would be the replacement business, which is expected to grow by a double-digit percentage over the next three years, Lin said.
“More elevators will reach the end of their service life and safety awareness has grown steadily among customers over the past few years,” he said.
Sales in its replacement business grew by an average of about 24.2 percent annually from 2015 to last year, the firm said.
The company last quarter sold 586 elevators, which contributed NT$568.83 million (US$18.01 million), or 55.22 percent, to first-quarter revenue, company data showed.
The maintenance and repair business reported sales of NT$461.34 million, or 44.78 percent, over the period, the data showed.
The maintenance and repair business has grown 4 percent annually over the past two years, Lin said, adding that the contribution is expected to increase this year on stricter government regulations.
Golden Friends president Yu Pen-li (游本立) said that the company last year gradually withdrew from the Chinese market, due to fierce competition and an unfavorable supply-demand situation.
There will likely be no contributions from the Chinese market in terms of sales this year, compared with 1.7 percent last year, Yu said.
The company plans to transform its Shanghai unit from an elevator supplier to a special components supplier, and might sell components to Taiwan, it said.
Cumulative revenue in the first four months of this year rose 8.2 percent to NT$1.49 billion, compared with NT$1.38 billion a year earlier, the company said.
Net income fell 1.73 percent to NT$205.68 million, with earnings per share of NT$1.16 and gross margin of 34.72 percent, it added.
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