COMPUTERS
HP to purchase Vertica
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) agreed to buy Vertica, adding technology that would help customers analyze large and growing quantities of digital data. The transaction is expected to close in the second fiscal quarter, which ends around the last day of April, Palo Alto, California-based HP said in a statement yesterday. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Vertica, based in Billerica, Massachusetts, provides software that helps businesses pore through massive amounts of information, HP chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robison said. Under chief executive officer Leo Apotheker and chairman Ray Lane, HP aims to capitalize on the explosion of data delivered via the Internet and data centers. The Vertica deal is important to HP in light of its lack of success with NeoView, the data-analysis software developed by HP, said Jayson Noland, an analyst at Robert W. Baird in San Francisco.
GERMANY
GDP expansion slows
Fourth-quarter economic growth slowed more than economists forecast to the weakest in a year as export demand eased and unusually cold temperatures curb construction output. GDP, adjusted for seasonal effects, rose 0.4 percent from the third quarter, when it increased 0.7 percent, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said yesterday. Economists had forecast an expansion of 0.5 percent, the median of 39 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey shows. From a year earlier, GDP increased 4 percent. “Exports weakened and consumers didn’t maintain their spending from the previous quarters,” said Andreas Scheuerle, an economist at Dekabank in Frankfurt. Still, “the outlook remains promising. The dent in global demand seems to be over, investments are doing very well and consumption will benefit from decent wage deals and a robust labor market.”
LOGISTICS
FedEx cuts profit target
FedEx Corp cut its quarterly earnings target because of rising fuel prices and snowstorms that snarled operations, less than two months after saying it was being “hammered” by winter weather. Adjusted earnings could fall to a range of US$0.70 to US$0.90 a share for the quarter ending on Feb. 28, from a prior forecast of US$0.95 to US$1.15, the Memphis, Tennessee-based company said in a statement on Monday. Analysts expected US$1.02 a share, the average of 20 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. FedEx, operator of the world’s largest cargo airline, foreshadowed the earnings fallout when it said in December it was being “hammered” by storms. Record snowfall in some cities may make this winter the worst for flight cancelations since the US government began tracking the data in 1987. FedEx said it continued to see “strength in our base business” in all segments and regions amid storms that dampened revenue and inflated costs.
BEVERAGES
Foster’s to split wine, beer
Australian drinks giant Foster’s yesterday said it planned to split its wine and beer divisions in a long-awaited move that is likely to draw takeover offers as the bloated industry consolidates. Foster’s, owner of Australia’s largest brewer Carlton and United Breweries, also said its half-year profits were down 12 percent as domestic beer sales slumped, especially in the flood-hit state of Queensland. Foster’s reported first-half net profit of A$312.1 million (US$313 million), down from A$355.7 million a year earlier.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts