Precision gear maker Khgears International Ltd (鈞興) on Wednesday last week said it would set up a plant in Taiwan this year to focus mainly on harmonic gear drives, as it aims to meet rising demand from the electric bike and industrial robot sectors.
The firm, incorporated in the Cayman Islands, said that it intends to make Taiwan its second major production base after China, but higher land costs in industrial zones and difficulty in recruiting workers for night shifts mean that it needs more time to consider relocating production.
Still, the company plans to construct another plant and build a research and development center in the next two years, it said.
In China, Khgears is building two plants in Zhuhai in China’s Guangdong Province for 15 million yuan (US$2.14 million), which are expected to be completed before September next year.
The plants would produce gears for industrial robots and alternative-fuel vehicles, as well as harmonic gear drives and other high-end smart transmission gears, the firm told a pre-listing conference in Taipei.
Khgears plans to debut its shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange later next month, with an initial public offering price (IPO) of about NT$70.
The firm is to become the first foreign-registered company to conduct an IPO on the local main bourse this year.
Khgears, established in January 2003, is the world’s largest supplier of high-end small and medium bevel gears.
Bevel gears, the gears where two shafts intersect, remained the company’s main product last year, accounting for 38 percent of total sales, it said, adding that other products include straight gears, powder metallurgical gears and gearboxes.
The company’s clients are mostly first-tier vendors in the fields of electric and garden tools, industrial robots and automobiles, Khgears president and spokesman David Du (杜春輝) said at the conference.
Khgears said that net income for the first half of this year jumped 39.46 percent annually to NT$116.43 million (US$3.71 million), or earnings per share of NT$2.77, while revenue increased 5.89 percent to NT$801.97 million.
The company’s revenue is expected to grow 5 to 10 percent this year, from last year’s NT$1.57 billion, analysts said.
Its full-year revenue split is likely to be 45-55 for the first and second halves, because the July-to-September period is the peak season for electric tools, boosting second-half sales, they said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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