STEEL
POSCO’s Q3 profit falls
South Korea’s top steelmaker, POSCO, reported an 8.6 percent fall in third-quarter net profit yesterday, blaming the higher cost of raw materials. Net profit for July to last month fell to 1.044 trillion won (US$923 million) from 1.142 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Operating profit rose 9.1 percent to 1.111 trillion won year-on-year, while sales were up 24 percent at 8.524 trillion won. “Higher raw materials costs restricted operating profit so we will focus on reducing input costs further,” the steelmaker said in a statement.
ELECTRONICS
India grants RIM extension
India has given BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) an extended deadline of Jan. 31 to provide its intelligence agencies a way of accessing all its services, a report said yesterday. Citing a home ministry note, the Economic Times newspaper said the government had decided to extend the original Oct. 31 deadline by 90 days. It will be RIM’s third reprieve as it seeks to end a three-year standoff with the Indian security agencies which have threatened to shut down services offered on its handsets unless they are given access to secure, encrypted data.
INDIA
Industrial output rises 5.6%
India’s industrial output rose just 5.6 percent year-on-year in August, a sharp decline from a revised 15.2 percent surge the previous month, official data showed yesterday. The figure was well below economists’ forecasts of a 9.9 percent expansion in output and the 10.6 percent growth posted in August last year. Manufacturing, which has an 80 percent weight in the industrial output index, grew 5.9 percent, compared with 10.6 percent in August last year, the federal statistics office said in a statement.
JAPAN
Confidence index drops
Japanese household sentiment slid for a third month last month, adding to signs of a slowdown in domestic demand. The confidence index dropped to 41.2 from 42.4 in August, the Cabinet Office said yesterday in Tokyo. A number blow 50 means pessimists outnumber optimists. The report underscores concern that personal consumption will slow in the coming months as government stimulus measures aimed at encouraging consumers to buy cars and electronics fade.
COMMODITIES
China to resume oil imports
An Argentine official said Monday that China had agreed to lift its suspension of soybean oil imports from the South American nation. “We have information that [the Chinese] are going to allow Argentine shipments of soybean oil,” Argentine Agriculture Minister Julian Dominguez told the state news agency Telam. China halted oil shipments in April of the commodity. Officials never provided an explanation for the suspension, but said it was related to Chinese health concerns.
PETROCHEMICALS
IPO could raise US$4bn
Petronas Chemicals Bhd, the petrochemicals unit of Malaysia’s state oil company, may raise as much as US$4 billion in the Southeast Asian nation’s biggest initial public offer (IPO), said two people familiar with the matter. Banks advising on the sale set an indicative price of 5.20 ringgit (US$1.67) per share, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The company had originally planned to raise about US$2 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said in June.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is