INTERNET
Amazon beats forecasts
Amazon.com Inc’s quarterly earnings beat Wall Street’s most bullish expectations as the world’s largest Internet retailer brought costs under control and saw early success selling more digital products through its new Kindle Fire tablet. Amazon reported net income fell to US$130 million or US$0.28 per diluted share in the first quarter, versus US$201 million or US$0.44 a year ago, but that was far above the average Wall Street forecast for US$0.07 a share. First-quarter revenue of US$13.18 billion, up 34 percent from a year earlier, was ahead of Wall Street estimates for US$12.9 billion. Operating income was US$192 million, compared with US$322 million a year earlier.
AUTOMAKERS
Daimler Q1 profit rose 20%
Record sales of its luxury Mercedes brand and a boost from its financial services arm helped automaker Daimler AG increase net profit by 20 percent to 1.42 billion euros (US$1.88 billion) in the first quarter. The increase came despite a slip in profitability at Mercedes, where the company spent more on new models, which should drive future profits, and on increased production capacity. Global revenues rose 9 percent to 27.01 billion euros and the company sold 9 percent more vehicles worldwide, at 502,086.
AUTOMAKERS
Honda earnings jump 61%
Honda Motor Co’s January-March profit jumped 61 percent as the Japanese automaker sold more cars and motorcycles in a turnaround from last year’s disasters. It forecast record global sales of 4.3 million vehicles for this fiscal year. Honda reported net profit of ¥71.5 billion (US$882.7 million) for the fiscal fourth quarter, up from ¥44.5 billion a year earlier. Quarterly sales improved 8.7 percent to ¥2.41 trillion, mainly because of rising sales in Japan and North America.
ELECTRONICS
Sharp expects more losses
Sharp Corp forecast a wider-than-estimated full-year net loss as falling TV prices prompted the company to turn to Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) for investment. The maker of Aquos televisions will probably post a ¥30 billion net loss for the year ending March 31, compared with a ¥376 billion loss a year earlier, Sharp said in a statement yesterday. Sharp’s LCD and solar-panel businesses will each lose about ¥10 billion in the current fiscal year, while the audio-visual and communication equipment unit may lose about ¥5 billion, it said.
COFFEEHOUSES
Starbucks net profit up 18%
Starbucks Corp perked up its net income by 18 percent in its fiscal second quarter, as more customers visited its cafes around the world. The Seattle-based coffee chain said it earned US$309.9 million, or US$0.40 per share, for the three months ended April 1. That’s compared with a profit of US$261.6 million, or US$0.34 per share, a year ago. Revenue for the latest quarter rose to US$3.2 billion, from US$2.79 billion a year ago.
ADVERTISING
WPP upbeat on Q1
The global advertising giant WPP yesterday said first-quarter profits were ahead of the same period one year ago, thanks to a strong performance in Asia Pacific and Latin America. Revenue increased 7.6 percent to £2.39 billion (US$3.9 billion) in the quarter, compared with £2.22 billion a year earlier, WPP said in a trading update. Like-for-like revenues — stripping out the impact of acquisitions, disposals and currency movements — rose 4 percent from a year earlier.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured