Restaurant chain operator Wowprime Corp (王品集團) yesterday launched its 17th brand, Mu Viet (沐越), eyeing growing local demand for Vietnamese cuisine.
“We found that Taiwanese are embracing authentic Southeast Asian cuisine and the Vietnamese food market has yet to become saturated [compared with Thai food],” a Wowprime official said by telephone.
It cost nearly NT$20 million (US$670,241) to develop Mu Viet, Wowprime’s first Southeast Asian food brand, the official said.
The company is known for its Western-style brands, led by Wang Steak (王品台塑牛排) and Tasty (西堤), but it has over the past few years begun developing Asian food brands, while shifting its focus from high-priced restaurants to low or mid-range eateries.
Earlier this year, Wowprime introduced Taiwanese street food brand Ma Lao Da (麻佬大) to the local market.
Customer expenditure at Mu Viet is expected to be about NT$500 per person, the company said.
Wowprime said it plans to open three or four Mu Viet outlets in Taiwan next year, adding that same-store sales of the Vietnamese food brand are likely to reach between NT$4 million and NT$5 million per month.
Following a multi-brand strategy, the company said it also aims to launch three new brands in Taiwan and two in China next year, without elaborating.
In the first three quarters of this year, Wowprime’s net income rose 41.17 percent year-on-year from NT$284.16 million to NT$401.15 million, with earnings per share up from NT$3.69 to NT$5.21.
Gross margin improved from 49.52 percent to 50.04 percent over the period, while cumulative sales totaled NT$11.96 billion, a 2.84 percent decline from NT$12.31 billion in the same period last year, which the company attributed to fewer outlets because of its restructuring plan.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
RSS