Hiwin Technologies Runs 24-Hour Shifts During Chinese New Year
2015/03/02 | By Ken LiuHiwin Technologies Corp., reportedly the world's No.2 maker of linear guide ways and ball screw bearings, kept 24-hour shifts during the weeklong Chinese New Year holidays to deal with backlogged orders, bucking the typical trend of light workloads in first quarters.
Chairman and chief executive officer, Eric Cho, predicts the company's deliveries in January this year to exceed those of the same month of last year thanks to unusually high order growth.
To cope with such surge, the company ran round-the-clock shifts during the Chinese New Year holidays, allowing line workers to take one or two days off in turns, with those working overtime to be paid additional NT$3,000 (US$96.77) daily.
The company posted combined revenue of NT$15.08 billion (US$486.67 million) last year, rising 21.55 percent year on year to hit the second highest in corporate history. Industry executives estimate the company to make NT$9 per share from 2014 operations based on NT$6.21 it had made throughout the first three quarters and income in Q4, 2014 from foreign exchange operations.
Cho says the company will spend NT$3-4 billion (US$96.77 million) to boost production at factories both in Taiwan and China.
The company will build a factory on the phase-two campus of Taichung City Precision Machinery Innovation Technology Park in central Taiwan to process mechanical components; a factory on the phase-three campus of Yunlin Technology-based Industrial Park in southern Taiwan to make ball screw bearings, linear guideways, and industrial robots; and a factory at Chiayi Dapumei Intelligent Park in southern Taiwan to provide front-end processing of robots.
In China, the company will begin to construct a factory at the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park in Q2 or Q3, 2015.
Cho, whose company makes precision parts for machine tools, foresees an uptrend in market for high-end machine tools more than that for low-end products this year.
The company has announced to raise wages 3-5 percent for line workers this year, with such scales having been raised 10-15 percent last year.
The company will pay non-administrative or plant workers two to three months of salary as yearend bonus this year, and senior salespeople six to 12 months of salary as bonus depending on performance.
(KL)
Hiwin and its Operation Results in the Last Five Years
| Year
Operation item
| 2010
| 2011
| 2012 (on consolidated basis)
| 2013 (on consolidated basis)
| 2014 (on consolidated basis)
|
| Revenue
| NT$8.21bn
| NT$14.13bn
| NT$12.37bn
| NT$12.48bn
| NT$15.08bn
|
| Pretax earnings
| NT$1.91bn
| NT$4.43bn
| NT$2.59bn
| NT$2.5bn
| NT$2.04bn*
|
| EPS
| NT$7.41
| NT$15.46
| NT$7.91
| NT$7.96
| NT$6.21*
|
Note: **Figures for the first three quarters.