Papermaking conglomerate YFY Inc (永豐餘控股) yesterday reported NT$1.07 billion (US$35.5 million) in net profit for last quarter, the highest since 2009, thanks to rising paper prices.
The figure represents a 202.9 percent surge from NT$352.47 million in the same period last year and earnings per share of NT$0.64, up from NT$0.21 per share a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
Sales in the July-to-September quarter totaled NT$17.47 billion, a 12.2 percent annual increase from NT$15.56 billion, with gross margin up to 17.35 percent, compared with 15.98 percent a year earlier, the statement said.
The strong performance was due mainly to surging wastepaper prices in China, which boosted paper product prices there, a YFY official said by telephone.
Chinese clients contributed more than 50 percent of revenue in the company’s industrial paper sector last quarter, YFY said.
The official, who declined to be named, said wastepaper prices in China last quarter hit about US$340 per tonne, jumping by more than 80 percent from US$180 per tonne in the same period last year.
Improving production efficiency at YFY’s industrial paper plant in Yangzhou, China, also lent support to the company’s performance there, the official said, adding that the facility has been running at almost full capacity.
The papermaker is capable of producing 940,000 tonnes of industrial paper products per year in China, company data showed.
YFY’s industrial paper business last quarter generated an operating profit of NT$435 million, indicating significant improvement from losses of NT$126 million a year earlier.
However, its household paper business posted losses of NT$67 million, compared with earnings of NT$124 million in the same period last year, data showed.
The company attributed the weaker-than-expected financial result of its household paper business to a decision not to increase prices for household paper, in an effort to retain customer loyalty, and prices that were too low to reflect rising material costs.
YFY shares yesterday gained 2.07 percent to close at NT$12.35 in Taipei trading, easily beating the benchmark TAIEX, which dropped 0.53 percent.
In related news, Chung Hwa Pulp Corp (中華紙漿), a YFY subsidiary that specializes in printing and writing paper products, also saw its net profit for last quarter grow on an annual basis on the back of increasing pulp prices.
Net profit last quarter totaled NT$171.98 million, which translated into a 233.6 percent increase from NT$51.55 million a year earlier.
Sales in the third quarter rose 6.2 percent annually from NT$5.35 billion to NT$5.68 billion.
Global pulp prices were about US$650 per tonne last quarter, up from between US$470 and US$480 per tonne in the same period last year, a Chung Hwa Pulp investor relations official said, adding that the firm has raised its product prices three times this year in response to rising material costs.
Chung Hwa Pulp said that it is likely to increase selling prices further by the end of this year, as pulp prices hit US$720 per tonne this month, the highest in three years.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS