Legend to boost workforce
HUI YUK-MIN
Legend Holdings, China's dominant personal computer manufacturer, plans to increase its headcount by between 10 per cent and 15 per cent this year to meet its sales expansion plans, according to executive Mary Ma.
The increase in staff would focus mainly on sales and marketing as well as providing value-added services to help promote Legend's brand name, Ms Ma told investors at Credit Suisse First Boston's investment conference on Wednesday.
Coupled with an expected increase in consumption spending of Chinese households and Internet-driven demand for home PCs, Ms Ma said China's PC market would continue to maintain fast growth during the next five years.
This would maintain China's position as the fastest-growing PC market in Asia-Pacific.
Ms Ma said that to maintain and further improve Legend's 31 per cent market share in PC shipments in China, Legend needed not only to provide more localised and customer-oriented products, but also to give better service.
"We are diversifying to services areas.
"This will not be a standalone business but a value-added service to our core [PC sales] business," Ms Ma said.
Legend has about 11,000 employees. The number will be increased by between 10 per cent and 15 per cent by the end of this year, mostly in its sales services force.
However, Ms Ma said the sales and general administrative cost to sales would not increase substantially as the company had achieved economies of scale. Such costs to sales are expected to hold at about 6 per cent.
Meanwhile, Legend said it had benefited from a drop in prices of computer components over the year, which helped improve the company's gross profit margin by about 5 per cent.
Shares in Legend eased 10 HK cents, or 1.88 per cent, to finish at HK$5.20 on Wednesday.
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