PHARMACEUTICALS
Novartis Q2 profits rise 12%
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis said yesterday its second quarter net profit rose 12 percent to US$2.72 billion, lifted by strong demand for new drugs. “Our recently launched products continue to transform our portfolio, our new products grew 46 percent and represent now 25 percent of our group sales in Q2,” Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez said. Sales of recently launched products contributed US$3.8 billion to overall group sales, which were up 27 percent at US$14.9 billion. Currency impact lent an 8 percent boost to overall revenues. For the rest of the year, the group said it was maintaining its forecast for sales growth reaching “around the double-digit mark.”
DEFENSE
Saab AB doubles profits
Swedish aerospace and defense company Saab AB more than doubled its profits in the second quarter as margins improved. Saab’s net profit reached 425 million kronor (US$64.7 million), up from 177 million kronor in the same period last year, but sales dipped to 5.86 billion kronor, from 5.99 billion kronor a year ago. The Linkoping, -Sweden-based company’s gross margin increased to 27.5 percent from 24 percent in the second quarter last year, when it posted restructuring costs of 25 million kronor and a one-time hit of 150 million kronor for a terminated contract.
APPLIANCES
Electrolux profits slump
Electrolux, a leading global maker of household appliances, yesterday reported a profit slump because of high materials prices and weak demand, and warned of difficult trading conditions for the rest of the year. Net profit for the second quarter dropped by 46 percent from the figure last year, and the price of shares in the group slumped by 11.2 percent to 128.40 kroner in early trading in a market showing an overall gain of 1.2 percent. In the quarter, net profit amounted to 561 million kroner from 1.03 billion kroner in the second quarter of last year.
SOFTWARE
Microsoft touts health site
Microsoft on Monday offered its HealthVault as a new care center for digitized medical records kept at Google Health. Google announced last month that it was pulling the plug on its free Health service because it has not flourished since its launch in early 2008. Microsoft detailed a simple way for people to shift Google Health records to HealthVault in encrypted files to protect the privacy of the information. Google’s service for storing and selectively sharing personal medical records online will “retire” on Jan. 1, but users will be able to download their information through the end of next year, according to the California firm.
CHINA
Tax revenue rises 29.6%
Tax revenue rose 29.6 percent to 5 trillion yuan (US$773 billion) in the first half of the year, giving officials more room to maneuver as they grapple with swelling local-government debt. The gain, reported by the Ministry of Finance on its Web site yesterday, compared with a 32.4 percent increase in the first quarter a year earlier. “Stable” economic growth and rising company profits helped to bolster revenue, with inflation also playing a role, the ministry said. Revenue from personal income tax rose 35 percent from a year earlier and money from resource taxes climbed 45 percent, according to the finance ministry, which also cited improvements in collection.
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