Tatung Co (大同) is to terminate production of traditional electricity meters today and focus on the fast-growing “smart meter” market, in one of its greater efforts to transform itself into a profit-making company, it said yesterday.
The company said it has manufactured 18.4 million mechanical electric meters since it produced the first unit in 1954. Tatung was the nation’s first company to tap into the mechanical electric market and spearheaded the production of smart electricity meters in Taiwan in 2008.
“Tatung will devote itself to expanding its presence in the world’s smart meter market, which is expected to grow to US$55.7 billion in 2028,” the firm said in a statement.
Photo: Fang Wei-jie, Taipei Times
Last year, Tatung shipped more than 1 million smart electric meters, it said.
A smart meter records information such as consumption of electric energy, voltage levels, current and power factor.
Tatung said it has so far helped to install about 30,000 high-voltage smart electric meters for local industrial power users.
Tatung operates a smart meter plant in Taoyuan’s Dayuan District (大園) with an annual manufacturing capacity of 1 million units. The company also runs a smart electric meter manufacturing facility in Thailand with the aim of tapping into rapidly growing replacement demand from ASEAN member nations until 2029.
Electric meters, heavy electrical equipment, motors, and wires and cables made up nearly 50 percent of Tatung’s revenue last year, company data showed.
It said exports of its electric meters expanded at an annual growth rate of 35 percent last year, outpacing the 19 percent annual growth of the products it sold in the domestic market.
Only 30 percent of its electric meters were exported last year.
Tatung reported a net profit of NT$523 million (US$17.95 million) in the first quarter of this year — its fourth straight profitable quarter after a new management team took over in the second quarter of last year.
The company posted a net profit of NT$3.67 billion for the whole of last year, compared with from a net loss of NT$1.5 billion in 2020. That translated into earnings per share of NT$1.57 last year, reversing its net loss of NT$0.46 per share a year earlier.
Tatung is not distributing a cash dividend this year.
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