Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, yesterday kept its sales target unchanged for this year, but withdrew the full-year forecast for Taiwan’s new car sales amid US tariff uncertainty.
The company said it was less affected by the tariff issue as its new vehicle sales this year have increased 4 percent year-on-year.
The company said that as it manages to buck the local car market’s downtrend, it is sticking to its new car sales target for this year of 165,000, compared with 159,000 units sold last year.
Photo: CNA
Hotai said its market share target remains at 36.7 percent, versus 34.9 percent last year.
New car sales in Taiwan tumbled 15.7 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of this year to 234,450 units, as consumers took a wait-and-see attitude, and expected tariff cuts on imported US cars and a lower commodity tax.
To stimulate the auto market, legislators last week approved a five-year extension to commodity rebates to the end of 2030. Consumers were eligible to pay up to NT$100,000 (US$3,270) less commodity tax per car when retiring old cars, but the rule has also become applicable to those who only buy new cars.
Hotai at the beginning of this year predicted that the domestic car market would record new vehicle sales of about 450,000 units this year, down 1.53 percent from 457,000 units last year. The company dropped its projection yesterday.
The company’s net profit tumbled 32.54 percent to NT$3.96 billion in the second quarter, from NT$5.87 billion in the same period last year. The company attributed the decline to lower asset disposal gains and fewer tax incentives.
On a quarterly basis, net profit declined 22 percent from NT$5.08 billion.
Earnings per share fell to NT$7.1 last quarter, from NT$10.54 a year earlier and NT$7.73 the prior quarter.
In the first half of this year, net profit totaled NT$8.26 billion, down 29.7 percent year-on-year, with earnings per share dropping from NT$21.1 to NT$14.83, Hotai said.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS