OIL
Strikes halt YPF’s output
Construction workers picketing over wages blocked roads in Argentina’s top crude-producing region on Saturday, halting output from an oilfield operated by YPF SA, company and union officials said. The Manantiales Behr field operated by YPF, in the southern province of Chubut, was shut down by the blockade staged by contractors working at the production site. YPF is the local unit of Spain’s Repsol YPF SA. The protest is the latest in a recent flurry of labor disputes to hit the Patagonian province. Work stoppages have raised concern about possible fuel shortages in Argentina as double-digit inflation stokes ever-higher salary demands. Guido Dickason, spokesman for the labor union involved in the protest, said that the protest would go on until a pay dispute with YPF was settled.
SAUDI ARABIA
Growth forecast at 5.3%
The nation’s economy will expand 5.3 percent this year, powered by higher oil prices and more government spending in the Arab world’s largest economy, National Commercial Bank said. The economy will grow 4.2 percent next year, the -Jeddah-based bank said in an e-mailed report yesterday. The kingdom will “benefit from the recent positive oil price shock” as it raises output 6.2 percent to average 8.8 million barrels a day this year, compared with last year, the bank said. The kingdom, which depends on oil for 86 percent of its revenue, announced increases in government spending in March as protests calling for more job opportunities and democracy engulfed the Middle East. The package included US$67 billion on housing and funds for the military and religious groups that backed the government’s ban on domestic protests and followed a US$36 billion handout announced on Feb. 23.
REAL ESTATE
UAE firm sees sales drop
Emaar Properties PJSC, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) biggest developer by market value, said revenue from apartment sales declined 81 percent in the first quarter and from villa sales 50 percent amid weak property demand. Income from apartment sales dropped to 375 million dirhams (US$102 million) and from villas to 60 million dirhams, according to Emaar’s earnings statement posted on the Dubai Financial Market yesterday. Overall revenue fell 31 percent to 1.98 billion dirhams in the first quarter, while profit slumped 45 percent. Emaar reported first-quarter earnings on April 24 and provided a breakdown of revenue yesterday. Emaar will need to “start relying more on international projects” to compensate for a decline in apartment deliveries in Dubai, said Majed Azzam, a Dubai-based analyst at AlembicHC Securities. Prices and margins are lower in international markets and Emaar’s earnings will be “hit this year, until the company resumes sales in Dubai,” he said yesterday.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Food mogul dies
Wallace McCain, a billionaire frozen food mogul and philanthropist who helped turn a small Canadian french fry plant into the global McCain Foods Ltd empire and later went on to control meat processor Maple Leaf Foods Inc, has died. He was 81. McCain, co-founder of McCain Foods and chairman of Maple Leaf Foods, died on Friday night in Toronto after a 14-month battle with pancreatic cancer. The death was announced by the board of directors of Maple Leaf Foods on Saturday.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to