Eclat Textile Co (儒鴻) is optimistic about its business outlook this year as it has clear order visibility for the next six months, the garment and fabric supplier said yesterday.
The company said its orders are mostly confirmed for the first half of this year and it has begun to receive new orders for the third quarter.
In addition, the company has seen stronger order growth from mid-sized and high-priced brand clients, it said, adding that the addition of six new customers last year would help contribute about 15 percent to its revenue this year.
Photo: Fang Wei-chieh, Taipei Times
Eclat, which counts global brands such as Nike Inc, Gap Inc, Target Corp, Lululemon Athletica Inc and Under Armour Inc among its top customers, has fabric operations in Taiwan and Vietnam, as well as garment plants in Vietnam, Cambodia, Lesotho, China and Indonesia.
The company said its garment plants have all been running at full capacity, with its outsourced capacity contribution estimated to rise to 30 percent this quarter, from 25 percent last quarter, indicating solid order recovery.
Eclat’s net profit in the fourth quarter last year was NT$1.39 billion (US$44.1 million), up 76.69 percent annually, or earnings per share of NT$5.1.
The increase was buoyed by higher revenue during the October-to-December quarter, which grew 11.3 percent annually to NT$8.49 billion, while gross margin and operating margin improved annually to 32.51 percent and 22.83 percent, respectively, company data showed.
Despite a notable sales recovery and a reversal of declining profit during the final quarter of last year, last year’s overall net profit was still down 23.77 percent annually to NT$5.18 billion and full-year revenue fell 22 percent to NT$30.79 billion due to customers' inventory adjustments.
Earnings per share were NT$18.87 last year, down from NT$24.75 in 2022, but gross margin increased by 3.59 percentage points to 31.44 percent and operating margin rose 1.5 percentage points to 21.28 percent, company data showed.
The increases in margins last year were mainly due to higher factory utilization, better production efficiency, improved product mix and inventories of low-priced raw materials, Eclat vice president for finance and accounting Roger Lo (羅仁傑) said.
Last year, the garment business accounted for 62 percent of the company’s total sales, with the fabric business taking the remaining 38 percent, Eclat vice chairman Richard Wang (王樹文) said.
Looking ahead, Wang said he is not pessimistic about the North American market this year and expects growth momentum to be better than last year, as customers have started to place long-term orders instead of rush orders.
In addition, large brands and channel customers remain active in placing orders, while order momentum from medium-sized brand clients is also quite strong, he said.
The company plans to expand capacity at its Indonesian plants this year and expects new production lines to make a substantial revenue contribution from the second quarter of next year, he added.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
RSS