ENTERTAINMENT
Disney’s revenue jumps 7%
Walt Disney Co reported a better-than-expected 7 percent jump in quarterly revenue, helped by strong advertising that boosted the company’s cable networks. Shares of the media, entertainment and consumer giant gained 3 percent in after-hours trading to US$35.75, from a regular-session close of US$34.70. The operator of the ESPN and ABC networks, a movie studio and theme parks, reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of US$10.68 billion, a 7 percent gain from a year earlier. It posted net income of US$1.48 billion, or US$0.77 per share, versus US$1.33 billion, or US$0.67, a year earlier.
FOOD AND DRINK
Franc bites Nestle’s profit
Swiss food and drink giant Nestle SA posted a drop in half-year earnings yesterday, blaming volatile markets, rising commodity prices and particularly the strength of the Swiss franc for dragging down profits. The Vevey-based company said it earned 4.7 billion Swiss francs (US$6.48 billion) during the first six months of the year. Illustrating the impact of the franc’s surge, the results represented a 24 percent drop when measured in francs, but a rise of almost 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company maintained it would end the year with organic growth at the top end of its target of 5 to 6 percent.
BANKING
Commerzbank net profit falls
Germany’s Commerzbank AG reported yesterday that net profit fell sharply in the second quarter, as the bank wrote down 760 million euros (US$1.1 billion) in bonds issued by financially troubled Greece. The bank otherwise showed improved results from trading securities and from its business financing medium-sized companies in a growing German economy. Net profit fell to 53 million euros from 361 million euros in the same quarter a year ago.
ENERGY
EON posts first quarterly loss
Germany’s biggest energy group, EON, reported yesterday its first ever quarterly loss, as government plans to abandon nuclear energy forced a restructuring plan and the loss of up to 11,000 jobs. EON said it had a net loss of 1.49 billion euros in the three months to June. The loss attributable to shareholders, a slightly wider definition of earnings, came in at 1.58 billion euros, compared with a profit of 1.63 billion euros in the second quarter of last year. EON also cut its full-year forecast and expected dividend as earnings were suffered from weaker sales of electricity and gas.
AIRLINES
Cathay profit tumbles
Cathay Pacific yesterday said net profit tumbled in the first six months of the year, but added it would push on with its expansion plans by ordering 12 aircraft from Boeing worth more than US$3 billion. The Hong Kong-based carrier said it earned HK$2.8 billion (US$359 million) in January-June, 59 percent below the HK$6.84 billion a year earlier, due to soaring fuel prices as well as impact of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in March. Revenue rose 13.2 percent to HK$46.79 billion.
HUMAN RESOURCES
Adecco’s Q2 profit soars
The world’s biggest temporary staffing group, Adecco, said yesterday its second quarter net profit soared 45 percent to 141 million euros, thanks to strong demand in the industrial segment. Revenues were up 11 percent at 5.166 billion euros for the three months ending June and the Swiss-based group forecast that the third would also be a strong quarter.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by