La Kaffa International Co (六角國際), owner of bubble milk tea brand Chatime (日出茶太), yesterday said that it is upbeat about a recovery in its business after a sharp decline in the first six months of this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Hsinchu-based company posted NT$22.52 million (US$762,924) in net income for the first half of the year, or earnings per share of NT$0.55, plunging 87.03 percent from a year earlier to a nine-year low.
Profit was NT$14.32 million in the April-to-June quarter, shrinking 86 percent from a year earlier, although it was a 74.6 percent increase from the first quarter, company data showed.
Photo: CNA
“The worst is over and business will continue to improve at home and abroad as consumer activity around the world regains momentum,” La Kaffa chairman Henry Wang (王耀輝) told reporters on the sidelines of a news conference in Taipei.
La Kaffa also operates restaurant chains Kingza Pork Chop (杏子豬排), DCZ Beef Noodles (段純貞牛肉麵), Osaka Ohsho Taiwan (大阪王將煎餃) and Kyoto-katsugyu Fried Steak (京都勝牛), and offers cold and hot desserts in Taiwan and 46 other nations.
Revenue for last month recovered to NT$423.26 million, a 12.18 percent increase from June, although it was down 10.52 percent from a year earlier.
The local market generates 20 percent of overall revenue, while overseas markets account for 80 percent, Wang said.
Earnings should climb for the rest of the year as consumers gain confidence, he said.
La Kaffa has not cut its headcount, furloughed workers or pruned wages because authorities in Taiwan quickly brought the health crisis under control, Wang said.
The company’s beverages are popular in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and North America, the company said.
Still, the pandemic prompted La Kaffa to embrace digital transformation, supported by 91APP — a local online-merge-offline retail solution provider — and Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), the banking arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), to take charge of payment issues.
People can place orders via an app and the products would be delivered the next day, Wang said.
The new “from shop to table” experience might generate revenue of between NT$3 million and NT$5 million per month, with repeat customers by the end of this year expected to make up 30 percent of people who use the app, he said.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Nvidia Corp’s GB300 platform is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of global artificial intelligence (AI) server rack shipments this year, while adoption of its next-generation Vera Rubin 200 platform is to gradually gain momentum after the third quarter of the year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said. Servers based on Nvidia’s GB300 chips entered mass production last quarter and they are expected to become the mainstay models for Taiwanese server manufacturers this year, Trendforce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) said in an interview. This year is expected to be a breakout year for AI servers based on a variety of chips, as
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) and the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance cooperation on the suspicious transaction analysis mechanism. This landmark agreement makes HSBC the first foreign bank in Taiwan to establish such a partnership with the High Prosecutors Office, underscoring its commitment to active anti-fraud initiatives, financial inclusion, and the “Treating Customers Fairly” principle. Through this deep public-private collaboration, both parties aim to co-create a secure financial ecosystem via early warning detection and precise fraud prevention technologies. At the signing ceremony, HSBC Taiwan CEO and head of banking Adam Chen (陳志堅)
RSS