President Chain Store Corp (
The venture will be the first cross-border collaboration for the firm and the Uni-President Group in 30 years, Lillian Lin (
It will also be the first Rakuten-backed virtual mall to operate outside Japan, Lin said by telephone.
President Chain, which runs the nation's biggest convenience store chain with 4,600 7-Eleven stores, will hold a 49 percent stake in the venture while Rakuten will own the remaining 51 percent, according to a statement issued after the signing ceremony.
The new online shopping site will begin operations in the second quarter of next year and aims to break even in its second year, the statement said.
The site hopes to attract up to 3,000 virtual stores within three years, it said.
Lin declined to comment on the new online business' earnings prospects, but said that the company was upbeat given the rising popularity of the local online shopping market.
Total turnover for the online shopping market is expected to grow 36.4 percent to NT$252.9 billion next year, from NT$185.4 billion this year, the Market Intelligence Center said in a report released last month. That includes NT$108 billion in the business-to-consumer business and NT$77.4 billion in the consumer-to-consumer segment, the Taipei-based researcher reported.
President Chain posted NT$3.27 billion in profits in the first three quarters of the year, up 20.85 percent from a year earlier.
Shares of President Chain rose NT$3.10, or 3.72 percent, to NT$86.5 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The stock has risen 9.92 percent year to date.
While Taiwan's market scale is much smaller than that of Japan and President Chain is a latecomer in the business, Lin said that the new site has an edge in offering goods that could be easily shipped between Taiwan and Japan.
The signing ceremony was attended by Uni-President Group CEO Jason Lin (林蒼生) and his Japanese counterpart, Rakuten chairman and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani.
Mikitani said Rakuten would start with Taiwan as part of the Japanese online shopping site's internationalization effort.
Founded in 1997, Rakuten has more than 20,000 virtual stores and plans to explore two to three overseas markets next year, he said, without elaborating.
President Chain operates nearly 40 subsidiaries in Taiwan. Besides the 7-Eleven chain, it also runs Starbucks coffee shops, the Web-based bookseller books.com.tw (博客來) and Cosmed (康是美) cosmetics and drugstores. Other subsidiaries include Japanese home-delivery service Takkyubin and pastry shop Mister Donut.
BIG BUCKS: Chairman Wei is expected to receive NT$34.12 million on a proposed NT$5 cash dividend plan, while the National Development Fund would get NT$8.27 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday announced that its board of directors approved US$15.25 billion in capital appropriations for long-term expansion to meet growing demand. The funds are to be used for installing advanced technology and packaging capacity, expanding mature and specialty technology, and constructing fabs with facility systems, TSMC said in a statement. The board also approved a proposal to distribute a NT$5 cash dividend per share, based on first-quarter earnings per share of NT$13.94, it said. That surpasses the NT$4.50 dividend for the fourth quarter of last year. TSMC has said that while it is eager
‘IMMENSE SWAY’: The top 50 companies, based on market cap, shape everything from technology to consumer trends, advisory firm Visual Capitalist said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) was ranked the 10th-most valuable company globally this year, market information advisory firm Visual Capitalist said. TSMC sat on a market cap of about US$915 billion as of Monday last week, making it the 10th-most valuable company in the world and No. 1 in Asia, the publisher said in its “50 Most Valuable Companies in the World” list. Visual Capitalist described TSMC as the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry operator that rolls out chips for major tech names such as US consumer electronics brand Apple Inc, and artificial intelligence (AI) chip designers Nvidia Corp and Advanced
Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Aramco), the Saudi state-owned oil giant, yesterday posted first-quarter profits of US$26 billion, down 4.6 percent from the prior year as falling global oil prices undermine the kingdom’s multitrillion-dollar development plans. Aramco had revenues of US$108.1 billion over the quarter, the company reported in a filing on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange. The company saw US$107.2 billion in revenues and profits of US$27.2 billion for the same period last year. Saudi Arabia has promised to invest US$600 billion in the US over the course of US President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump, who is set to touch
SKEPTICAL: An economist said it is possible US and Chinese officials would walk away from the meeting saying talks were productive, without reducing tariffs at all US President Donald Trump hailed a “total reset” in US-China trade relations, ahead of a second day of talks yesterday between top officials from Washington and Beijing aimed at de-escalating trade tensions sparked by his aggressive tariff rollout. In a Truth Social post early yesterday, Trump praised the “very good” discussions and deemed them “a total reset negotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner.” The second day of closed-door meetings between US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) were due to restart yesterday morning, said a person familiar
RSS