US Internet giants are expected to report strong revenue and profit growth for the final quarter of last year, driven by the ongoing shift in advertising and retail dollars to the Web and goosed by the holiday rush.
Both online advertising spending and e-commerce sales continue to leap ahead at double-digit percentage rates, significantly surpassing growth in the offline world.
The result, analysts say, should be strong growth for Internet bellwethers Google Inc, Yahoo Inc, eBay Inc and Amazon.com Inc.
Goldman's Anthony Noto said in a note to investors that Google's net revenue could be anywhere between 20 percent and 30 percent higher than in the September quarter, versus his official 20 percent forecast.
Anticipation of strong results has driven Google's stock to new highs. It reached an all-time high of US$475.11 on Wednesday, marking a 175 percent rise from its 52-week low of US$172.57, set March 14.
The Web search giant's remarkable growth trajectory has proven tough to predict, particularly without the aid of company forecasts -- which Google famously declines to provide.
The company's ascent has been driven not only by rapid adoption of search marketing but also by improving revenue per search and overseas expansion. Its expected efforts to step up profits from new products, particularly listing service Google Base, should add another tricky element to the mix this year.
"Google is an iconic company that, like Microsoft and eBay before it, has defined a new and vital industry," Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy said recently in a note to investors.
"It is singularly well-positioned to benefit from the growth of online advertisement and search" and go beyond that with "innovative new products that have redefined the consumer Internet experience," Rashtchy said.
Yahoo, which on Tuesday kicks off the reporting season for Internet companies, is also expected to report strong results, albeit likely again overshadowed by high drama at Google.
"Yahoo's branded business should benefit from a combination of volume and pricing growth, driven by the holiday shopping period and by continued migration of ad dollars online," Jefferies & Co analyst Youssef Squali said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day