Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) is expected to recover quickly from the effects of COVID-19, as life returns to normal and thanks to the government’s domestic travel incentives, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a note on Friday.
THSRC’s business might have bottomed out after revenue fell 49.83 percent year-on-year to NT$2.03 billion (US$67.59 million) in April, the lowest in nearly 10 years, while combined revenue in the first four months dropped 26.44 percent to NT$11.63 billion, as the COVID-19 outbreak reduced ridership, the investment consultancy said.
“The worst should be over in April as domestic tourism has started to resume in May after a half month without local coronavirus cases and THSRC carried out a promotion plan for students from May 27 and will provide more plans for all types of groups such as commuters,” Yuanta analyst Elle Yang (楊郁容) said in the note.
Photo: Wu Cheng-fung, Taipei Times
THSRC on Friday said that it is to provide six extra services per week from today and add 33 extra services during weekends from Friday next week to meet increased demand due to the government’s incentive programs for domestic tourism as the coronavirus situation stabilizes, the company’s Web site says.
“The ‘disease prevention tourism’ policy to be launched by the government by providing subsidies for tourism accommodation on July 1 should stimulate the domestic tourism industry and also increase demand for THSRC,” Yang said.
As people reduced their use of public transportation for tourist and business trips amid the COVID-19 outbreak, THSRC’s daily average ridership fell 17.2 percent year-on-year to 151,000 people in the first quarter, while its passenger load factor dropped to 53.7 percent, compared with 67.5 percent a year earlier, a company document released after an investors’ conference on Thursday showed.
As a result, the high-speed railway operator reported that net income decreased 50.63 percent year-on-year to NT$1.13 billion in the first quarter, with earnings per share of NT$0.2, the lowest in three years, company data showed.
Yang said that the company’s ridership and load factor recovered gradually last month.
Its sales are expected to decline year-on-year this month and the next, narrowing notably in July after promotion plans are offered, she said.
While border restrictions might continue, they would have little effect on operations, as foreign tourists constitute less than 10 percent of THSRC’s ridership, she added.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts