LATITUD ... Mar11

Latitude Tree Holdings Bhd is investing US$8 million (RM24.2 million) to expand its production line in Vietnam to cope with increasing orders for its products. … boosting the furniture maker's capacity to US$11 million in sales a month from the current US$9 million.

Latitude Tree manufactures and exports wooden bedroom, living and dining room sets. Its main export market is the US with 90% of products sold there while 10% is exported to Europe and the Middle East.

They are also looking at penetrating the Chinese domestic market in the future due to the growing demand there. But any efforts of expansion would be focused on its Vietnam plants instead of Malaysia.

The US$8 million investment is financed internally as it has a net cash of RM90.12 million with no borrowings.
For the first half (1H) ended Dec 31, 2010, Latitude Tree saw its net profit fall 48% to RM11.78 million from RM22.6 million a year earlier. The decline was due mainly to the weakening US dollar and higher prices of raw materials, despite its revenue increasing 11% to RM291 million from RM262 million.

On the rising Vietnam dong, there was little impact on its operations as the rising costs would be cushioned by the stronger US dollar against the dong.