Fulgent Sun International Holding Co (鈺齊國際) on Thursday reported increased sales and net profit for the fourth quarter of last year, thanks to robust orders, larger manufacturing capacity, improved production efficiency and better financial controls.
The supplier of global brand sports shoes and functional outdoor shoes said that net profit for the quarter hit a record high of NT$388.31 million (US$14.02 million), up 107.8 percent from NT$186.88 million a year earlier.
Earnings per share were NT$2.09, up from NT$1.01 a year earlier, it said.
Photo: Liao Shu-ling, Taipei Times
Sales for the quarter were NT$4.498 billion, up 51 percent from a year earlier, while gross margin for the three months was 19.1 percent compared with 20.2 percent the previous year, the company said.
“Although gross margin in the fourth quarter was lower than a year before, it rose by 1.3 percentage points from 17.8 percent in the third quarter, and much higher than the 14.4 percent in the second quarter, when the company’s operations were deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Fulgent Sun said in a statement.
Better expense controls led to an operating margin increase of 1.8 percentage points quarter-on-quarter to 11.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the highest of last year, it said.
Fulgent’s headquarters are in Yunlin County’s Douliou City (斗六), with seven production bases overseas — three in China, three in Vietnam and one in Cambodia.
Last year, operations in Vietnam accounted for 50 percent of output, with China reporting 31.1 percent and Cambodia 18.9 percent.
As with many of its peers, the company was forced to stop production at its overseas operations last year due to COVID-19 outbreaks, first in Cambodia in May, and then in Vietnam from June to July.
“The impact of the pandemic on manufacturing last year was far greater than in 2020,” Fulgent said.
However, with flexible responses and accelerated expansion of production capacity, the company reported record revenue of NT$15.54 billion for last year, increasing 37 percent from NT$11.35 billion in 2020.
Net profit for the year was NT$1.18 billion, the second-highest in the company’s history and up 32.3 percent from NT$897.58 million in 2020, it said, adding that earnings per share were NT$6.39, compared with NT$5.06 a year earlier.
Gross margin and operating margin for the year fell to 18 percent and 9.5 percent respectively, from 21 percent and 11.2 percent a year earlier due to unfavorable foreign exchange rates.
Fulgent said that it has 50 brand clients, with 10 brands accounting for about 80 percent of its revenue last year.
The company said it would continue developing new customers in the coming year after last year adding clients such as Columbia Sportswear Co, Callaway Golf Co and its subsidiary Cuater, Alfa Sko AS and On Inc, maker of the Run on Clouds brand.
European markets comprised 48.2 percent of Fulgent’s sales last year, with 40.9 percent in North America, the company said, adding that it expects growth to continue as orders for spring and summer shoes are robust.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS