Letter from the Chairman

2020 has been a challenging year, and the global supply chains and consumer lifestyles have been significantly affected by the trade war, COVID-19 pandemic, and macroeconomic turmoil. Corporate development is closely related to global sustainable development. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is largely associated with big companies. Entering the post-COVID-19 era, WPG upholds the core values of "Teamwork, Integrity, Professionalism and Effectiveness" to take into account business development and social and environmental responsibility. In the future, we will continue review our sustainable development strategy, hoping to contribute to a shared future for mankind and the earth. Since 2014, WPG has issued seven CSR reports with third-party verification. In 2020, Chief Sustainability Officier was appointed by the resolution of the Board of Directors, which may create a new atmosphere for WPG’s sustainable development. We hope to communicate with stakeholders on WPG Holdings’ value and performance through this report while reviewing the challenges, opportunities, and corporate sustainability conducts.

In terms of corporate governance, we continue to dedicate our efforts to set up an effective corporate governance structure, with main principles that include protecting shareholder interests, improving the board oversee performance, respecting stakeholder interests, and enhancing information transparency.  In 2020, we continued to improve the Board of Directors' structure and added one independent director, which brings a total of 4 independent directors in the 6^th term Board. WPG aims to introduce female members to increase exposure to different perspectives and opinions. Given that "Integrity" is the element for corporate sustainability and WPG’s core value, we further advocated integrity to all employees through WPG’s Employee Code of Conduct. In addition, in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the process of digital transformation, we review issues such as information security and trade compliance based on the concept of risk management. Corresponding to recent trends, we continue to incorporate different sustainability issues in our corporate development strategies.

For sustainable supply chains and services, since WPG is part of the global electronic supply chain, its value-added services help to enhance information transparency of the overall value chain and add value to WPG. For smart manufacturing logistics, we dedicated efforts to building a co-opetition eco-system and continue to solve the challenges faced by customers in implementing smart manufacturing via process intelligence to achieve a win-win situation for the industry.

For environmental sustainability, the global climate crisis is the most severe risk in the world. In order to correspond to Paris Agreement, climate-related risk and opportunities governance was conucted in 2020 with reference to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). Meanwhile, the company actively developed clean technological product solutions with engineers and customers, hoping to maximize the company’s added value to value chains, dedicating efforts to industrial transformation and carbon reduction. For operational management, WPG headquarters was launched in November 2020 and obtained the Taiwan EEWH Green Building Gold Certificate issued by the Ministry of the Interior. In the future, we plan to continue improve our performance in environmental management.

For talent development and transition, WPG’s major blueprint for future talent cultivation involves the continual development of employee functions. We focus on creating an inclusive, diverse and innovative work environment that encourages talented employees and set comptetitive compensation through fair appointment of staff, performance management, talent cultivation, and compensation surveys and analysis. The company also conducts diversified education and training courses to encourage work life balance. WPG believes that employees are the most important asset. To attract and motivate talents and improve the remuneration and employee welfare system, Employee Stock Ownership Trust (ESOT) was introduced in January 2021, encouraging employees to become long-term shareholders and share the company’s operating results. Given the challenges posed by COVID-19 in 2020, WPG prioritized employee health and deployed a number of COVID-19 prevention measures via digital transformation in order to reduce the influence on business operations and to ensure occupational health and safety.

For social participation, we continued to encourage colleagues to participate in various social welfare and advocate on environmental protection and social care to achieve a positive impact cycle on society. In 2020, WPG continued to participate in coastal afforestation activities, with 4,000 saplings planted on the coastline within the past two years. WPG is committed to social welfare services for disadvantaged groups and youth training, providing WPG’s abilities and resources for youth development through industry-academia cooperation, with the hope to reduce information barriers between the industry and academia, and improve the company’s overall effectiveness. WPG also continued to cooperate with social welfare groups to send warm gifts at the end of the year. A total of 1,108 Christmas shoeboxes were collected and sent to children from disadvantaged families as blessings in 2020.

Going forward, we will continue to improve sustainable management and always be consistent in our business philosophy and services, with the vision of “To Become the First Choice of Industry. To Become the Benchmark of Distribution.”. By comprehensively promoting the core value of “Teamwork, Integrity, Professionalism, and Effectiveness,” we aim to achieve a win-win situation with our customers, employees, investors, suppliers, competent authorities, communities, NGOs, and other stakeholders.  Under rising challenges of emerging risks, WPG hope to promote sustainability in global ecology and the overall industrial chain via comprehensive design and implementation of digital transformation, and jointly develop towards the perpetual goal of “Grow Together, Strive Together and Win Together.”  

Letter from the CEO

Since early 2020, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world has led to adjustments in the political, economic and industry status. We believe that 2020 is a turning point, as uncertainties from the COVID-19 pandemic, US-China trade war and tech war significantly affects the adjustment and structure of various industry supply chain globally. It is indeed challenging to respond to “broken chain” crisis quickly, to restruct supply chain and the same time to seize the opportunity of transformation.

WPG commenced digital transformation since 2015 and has achieved great performance in the first stage in 2020. Thanks to excellent internal and external cooperation including our front-end staff, warehouse staff, technical colleagues and IT team, WPGDADAJIA, WPGDADABANG and WPGDADATONG all achieved the target of "202020%" set by the BOD Outing in 2017, which was an outstanding performance!

In the past 5 years, WPG’s front-end and back-end departments have been focusing on customer needs and seeking available tools and procedures in their professional fields for "Digitalization in Business - From Offline to Online Services". The company explored new possibilities, and provided various services to major stakeholders.

In the next decade, starting from 2021, WPG plans to develop new generation models, including LaaS  (Logistics as a Service) to BPaaS  (Business Process as a Service), starting from First Principle Thinking to Zero-Based Thinking, and imagine new industry business dimensions for the next decade.

WPG’s core business of electronic component distribution will be based on lean operating processes and structures. Under strong ambition and service spirit, the business management team’s main targets include: "Global Deployment, Large-Scale, Double Output Value, Happy Enterprise, Platform Empowerment, and Seamless Succession". The company will further develop and deepen the Objectives and Key Results (referred to as OKR) mechanism introduced in 2019 so that the front- and back-end services and teams in all regions can obtain the guidelines and planning context. The teams work together and form alliances with the hope that WPG will remain strong and resourceful under the changing business environment, and develop steadily and quickly towards the vision of “To Become the First Choice of Industry. To Become the Benchmark of Distribution.".