INTERNET
Groupon gets figures wrong
Groupon Inc chopped its stated revenue by more than half in an updated Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday as it corrected the way it accounts for money it receives selling coupons. The online deal site also said that its chief operating officer, Margo Georgiadis, has gone back to Google, where she worked before joining Groupon in May. Groupon, which offers consumers a variety of deals each day targeted for their preferences and city, has been preparing for its initial public offering. It first filed registration papers with the SEC in June. The company’s restatement on Friday indicates it is still planning on an IPO, though it is uncertain when that will occur. Groupon is now saying last year’s revenue was US$312.9 million, instead of US$713.4 million. And its revenue in this year’s second quarter was US$392.6 million, it now says, not US$878 million, as it reported before.
TECHNOLOGY
S3 files case against Apple
S3 Graphics Co, the image-compression technology company being bought by HTC Corp (宏達電), filed a complaint against Apple Inc at the US International Trade Commission. The content of the complaint filed on Thursday wasn’t immediately made public. The ITC, an arbiter of trade disputes with the power to block imports of products found to infringe US patents, posted a notice of S3’s filing on Friday. S3, in a separate ITC case in July, won a partial ruling against California-based Apple that said the Mac OS X computer system violates patents. The judge’s decision is under review by the full commission. S3 makes image-compression technology and its Texture Compression feature is used in Nintendo Co’s Wii and Sony Corp’s PlayStation portable gaming systems.
BANKING
UBS chief stands down
Swiss bank UBS’ CEO Oswald Gruebel resigned yesterday, shouldering the blame after its scandal-hit investment banking business lost US$2.3 billion in alleged rogue trading. Changes that will see that part of the bank’s operations adopt a less risky business model would be pushed through faster, its chairman said, and Europe, Middle East and Africa head Sergio Ermotti would replace Gruebel on an interim basis. “Oswald Gruebel feels that it is his duty to assume responsibility for the recent unauthorized trading incident. It is testimony to his uncompromising principles and integrity,” chairman Kaspar Villiger said in a statement. Gruebel, a 67-year-old former trader who helped turn around Credit Suisse a decade ago, was brought out of retirement in 2009 to try to revamp UBS after it almost collapsed in 2008.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Fitch downgrades Pfizer
Credit rating agency Fitch says it is downgrading several credit ratings for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc ahead of the loss of patent protection for its best-selling drug, Lipitor. Fitch downgraded Pfizer’s long-term issue default rating to “A+” from “AA-” in anticipation of revenue pressures as the company continues to pay off its 2009 acquisition of Wyeth. The company has paid down US$7.6 billion in debt in the past two years, with US$41.7 billion remaining. Fitch acknowledges the company “has shown some financial discipline by reducing the debt load,” but as Lipitor loses patent protection in November, “Fitch is most concerned with Pfizer’s ability to further moderate costs during the height of its patent cliff.” Lipitor was the best-selling drug in the world last year at US$10.7 billion.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the