St Shine Optical Co (精華光學), a contact lens contract manufacturer and brand vendor, is expected to see a double-digit percentage increase in year-on-year sales this quarter after three new production lines came online last month and a fourth is to follow by the end of this month, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a note on Friday.
The New Taipei City-based company, which sells contact lenses under the Ticon (帝康) brand, reported combined sales of NT$995.86 million (US$34.14 million) in the first two months of this year, up 9.19 percent from a year earlier, and Yuanta said the firm’s first-quarter sales are likely to increase 13.5 percent year-on-year to NT$1.65 billion, but remain flat quarter-on-quarter.
“St Shine’s January-February sales were below expectations, mainly due to an unfavorable foreign exchange trend and fewer working days,” Yuanta analyst Lee Yi-hsin (李懿欣) said in the note.
“We expect sales in March to return to above NT$650 million, as the number of working days has returned to normal,” the statement added.
St Shine also does contact lens original design and equipment manufacturing services for several clients, including Japan’s Seed Co and Hoya Corp, as well as Bausch & Lomb Inc and Hubble Contacts in the US.
The company last year announced plans to invest more than NT$900 million to launch 20 new production lines to cope with the growing scale of its operations.
The timeline for the remaining production lines depends on staff recruitment, but St Shine expects all of them to start mass production by the end of the third quarter, with local Chinese-language media saying that they aim to meet demand from the company’s Japanese and US clients.
US sales accounted for 8 percent of last year’s total sales, up 507 percent year-on-year, and shipments to the US are expected to grow by 80 percent this year, accounting for 15 percent of overall sales, local media reported, citing a higher number of orders from Hubble Contacts.
Despite the unfavorable trend in foreign exchange rates, St Shine’s sales for this year are expected to increase 14.9 percent to NT$7.37 billion, after an annual decline of 0.63 percent last year, while earnings per share could reach NT$37.94, compared with NT$31.52 last year, after factoring in the effect of gross margin erosion due to the additional depreciation of the new production lines, Lee said.
St Shine on Friday posted a net profit of NT$396 million for last quarter, down 20 percent quarter-on-quarter, as gross margin fell from 40.9 percent to 38.8 percent over the period due to limited capacity and foreign exchange losses.
For the whole of last year, net profit dropped 10.6 percent to NT$1.59 billion, but the company’s board still decided to offer shareholders a cash dividend of NT$25 per share, representing a payout ratio of 79.31 percent.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
RSS