Luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC yesterday said it recorded a 25 percent jump in sales last year, underpinned by solid demand for its first-ever SUV, Cullinan, just a year after the launch.
The 116-year-old British company said it sold a record 5,152 cars, compared with 4,107 units in the prior year.
“Worldwide demand last year for our Cullinan SUV has driven this success and is expected to stabilize in 2020,” chief executive officer Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes said in a statement.
The Cullinan was unveiled in 2018.
The BMW-owned brand’s strong numbers serve as a breather at a time when the global automobile industry is still grappling with various challenges amid a broader economic slowdown that dented sales of automakers such as Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Co.
North America continued to be the biggest contributor with about a third of Rolls-Royce’s total sales, followed by China and Europe.
BENTLEY
British luxury carmaker Bentley returned to profitability, helped by a 5 percent sales increase after a strong performance in Europe and the Americas, the Volkswagen-owned brand said yesterday.
Sales reached 11,006 vehicles, boosted by the new Continental GT Convertible model and a series of derivatives and limited edition models.
“This result secures Bentley’s return to profitability, demonstrates the successful implementation of our turnaround, and sends a clear signal for the potential of Bentley for 2020,” chief executive officer Adrian Hallmark said.
The firm did not disclose its profit figure for the year, but in the first nine months last year, operating profit stood at 65 million euros (US$73 million), according to previously released figures from Volkswagen.
Sales in China fell by just over 12 percent to 1,940 models, which Bentley said was due to the lack of availability of cars as the Continental GT only arrived last month.
ASTON MARTIN
Meanwhile, Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd said that its annual core profit would plummet more than 45 percent from 2018, as weak demand in Europe led to a drop in wholesale volumes.
The 106-year-old firm, famed for being fictional agent James Bond’s brand of choice, in November had highlighted tough trading conditions, particularly in the UK and Europe, and weak demand for its Vantage model.
The company said these conditions had continued through its peak delivery period last month and led to a 7 percent drop in wholesale volumes for the year.
It expects adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of between £30 million and £140 million (US$39.6 million and US$184.66 million), compared with £247.3 million a year earlier.
“From a trading perspective, 2019 has been a very disappointing year,” chief executive officer Andy Palmer said, as the company now expects adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.5 percent to 13.5 percent, down from 22.6 percent in 2018.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day