Shares of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) outperformed the broader market last year as the company offered solid fundamentals and a good dividend yield.
While the shares fell more than 27 percent in the third quarter of last year due to investors’ concerns over the planned extensions to Pingtung and Yilan, they gradually bounced back in the fourth quarter as the market’s concern about the company’s capital spending plan appeared overdone.
THSRC shares ended last year with an annual gain of 25.7 percent, closing at NT$38.4 on Tuesday.
That was better than a 4.01 percent rise on the transportation sub-index and the TAIEX’s 23.33 percent advance for the whole of last year, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
THSRC on Tuesday announced that it is to increase the number of services by 436, or 34 percent, from Jan. 21 to Jan. 30 to meet increased demand over the Lunar New Year holiday, according to the company’s Web site.
Thanks to rising demand, the company transported an average of 183,000 passengers a day in the first three quarters of last year, a 5.5 percent year-on-year increase, with its passenger load factor rising 0.7 percentage points to 67.7 percent from the same period a year earlier, company data showed.
The company posted cumulative revenue of NT$43.3 billion (US$1.44 billion) in the first 11 months of last year, up 4.81 percent from NT$41.32 billion the previous year.
There is still room for revenue growth, as the high-speed rail is likely to gradually replace driving for medium to long-distance trips, while an improving domestic economy and stimulus measures to boost domestic tourism also bode well for the company’s business going forward, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a client note.
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