Airmate (Cayman) International Co (艾美特) plans to diversify its product portfolio by offering smart office appliances, company president Lin Yung-chang (林永昌) told an investors’ meeting in Taipei yesterday.
The move is expected to help improve the company’s profits and gross margin, as it would be relying less on electric fans and heaters, which saw declining sales in the first half of the year, Lin said.
While the two products accounted for about 94 percent of total sales in the first six months, sales of electric fans and heaters dropped 2.92 percent and 28.06 percent year-on-year respectively, company data showed.
“That suggests our performance depends a lot on the weather,” Lin said. “In a bid to change this, we aim to introduce smart office appliances to the Chinese market next year.”
Airmate said it aims to reach new markets and is considering tapping into Malaysia later this year, with electric fans as its main product, as the company’s sales in China in the first half of the year declined 13.01 percent annually.
China accounted for 53 percent of the company’s total sales, Airmate account manager Sandy Ho (何美秀) said.
Northeast Asia revenue contributed 33 percent, while combined sales in Europe and the US took up 14 percent, company data showed.
Airmate’s cumulative sales declined 3.56 percent year-on-year to NT$6.33 billion (US$201.32 million) in the first six months, but net income improved to a record NT$298.06 million, compared with net losses of NT$8.48 million a year earlier.
Earnings per share climbed to NT$2.45, compared with losses per share of NT$0.07 a year earlier, while gross margin increased 3.46 percentage points to 19.41 percent, reflecting an 11.64 percent decline in operating expenses and higher non-operating income, Ho said.
“There is still room for improvement in the second half as we enhance management efficiency,” she said, adding that the number of workers in China declined by between 1,300 and 1,500 people to 4,500 this month.
The company is building a new plant in China’s Shenzhen, which is expected to be completed in August 2021, Airmate chairman Shih Jui-pin (史瑞斌) said.
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
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
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