Trump’s trade aggression quietly helps Taiwanese gadget maker

Bloomberg

Amidst the hand-wringing over escalating US-China trade tensions, Taiwanese electronics producer New Kinpo Group is rejoicing.
Chief Executive Officer Simon Shen said inquiries about New Kinpo’s plants in Thailand and in the Philippines, where its unit Cal-Comp Technology plans a public listing this year, are increasing. New Kinpo has 28,000 workers in the two Southeast Asian countries — thrice its 9,000 headcount in China, where its products are subject to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“President Trump is helping us a lot, so I like him more and more,” Shen said. “This gives us the very chance of getting new businesses. The constraint for growth is that we can’t build factories fast enough.”
Shen’s company is benefiting from its ability to skirt the new levies by producing goods in Southeast Asia, even as everyone from automakers to farmers express anxiety about the impact of the looming trade war. The Philippine peso trading near a 12-year low is also making raw materials cheaper and Cal-Comp exports all its output from the country, shielding it from the weak local currency, Shen said.
New Kinpo, which has an annual revenue of $7 billion, manufactures a wide range of products from computer hardware to facial massagers.
While its Philippine unit expects revenue to double from last year’s $210 million, razor thin margins may weigh on its parent’s profitability. Cal-Comp plans to raise as much as $126 million in its initial public offering, only the second listing in the Philippines this year. Shen said he isn’t worried the slump in Philippine stocks, among Asia’s worst performers in 2018, may damp appetite for the share sale.