Analysts remained bearish on the outlook for the local auto industry after the latest report on new car sales showed a more than 40 percent decline year-on-year in the first 10 days of this month, as consumers were worried about the new administration’s fuel policy.
Figures released by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed that new vehicle sales plunged 42.5 percent year-on-year to 3,427 units between May 1 and 10.
In the first four months of the year, domestic auto sales dropped 20 percent to 92,091 units year-on-year, the government’s data showed on May 2.
Nick Lai (賴以哲), an analyst at JPMorgan Securities (Taiwan) Ltd, said yesterday that he expected domestic auto sales to drop another 15 percent to 270,000 units this year, while some automakers forecast a 20 percent decline to 260,000 units.
Merrill Lynch (Taiwan) analyst Albert Hsu (徐志偉) last Thursday forecast a smaller 9 percent drop in auto sales this year to 310,000 units — a record low since 1988.
Against this backdrop, Lai recommended investors avoid auto stocks and revisit them in the fourth quarter of the year.
He said that the new administration was likely to raise domestic gasoline and diesel prices after it takes office on May 20, placing more pressure on auto demand in the near term.
Hsu agreed, saying higher fuel prices could hurt automakers’ sales and profitability because it could cap sales of larger and luxury vehicles and force consumers to switch to small and medium-sized models.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained