TECHNOLOGY
Sharp rises on panel news
Sharp Corp’s share price yesterday rose to its highest in a month after saying Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), which has agreed to invest in the Japanese television maker, will start buying its panels earlier than it had planned. The stock closed at the day’s high of ¥424, up 8.2 percent and its highest since May 2. The stock was the second-best performer on Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average, which rose 2 percent. Foxconn will start buying from Sharp’s TV panel unit next quarter, three months earlier than planned under an agreement in March, Sharp president Takashi Okuda told reporters on Friday.
BANKING
Top Chinese officials quizzed
State media reports say the bosses of China’s postal bank and of a regional city lender are among the latest financial bigwigs caught up in corruption investigations. The China Securities Journal and other reports yesterday said that Postal Savings Bank (郵政儲蓄銀行) governor Tao Liming (陶禮明) was recently detained for questioning. The reports gave no details, but said that past government audits had found fault with the postal bank’s governance. Separately, the financial magazine Caixin and other reports said Zhuang Yonghui (莊永輝), former chairman of Yantai Bank (煙台銀行), was being questioned in a corruption case that has implicated more than a dozen people. The bank’s former president was arrested earlier this year on embezzlement charges.
TELECOMS
Telefonica selling Unicom
Spanish phone company Telefonica is selling about half its stake in China Unicom (中國聯通) back to the Chinese state-owned phone carrier for HK$11 billion (US$1.4 billion). Unicom said on Sunday it had agreed to buy about 1.1 billion shares from Telefonica at HK$10.21 a share. The shares represent a 4.56 percent stake. After the deal, Telefonica will still own 5 percent of Unicom, whose shares are traded in Hong Kong. The deal is expected to close by the end of next month. Telefonica’s first-quarter profit plunged 54 percent, in large part due to a write-down of the value of an investment in Italy.
AIRLINES
Flybe profit plunges
Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline, posted a steep fall in full-year profit, hit by tough economic conditions in Britain and rising fuel costs. The British carrier yesterday reported underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and restructuring of £88.8 million (US$136.9 million) for the year ending March. Group revenues rose 3.3 percent to £615.3 million. It described the performance, which was hit by a 5 percent decline in its core UK market and £3.7 million of losses at its Flybe Europe division, “disappointing.”
RETAIL
Tesco Q1 sales drop 1.5%
Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, posted a fall in UK underlying sales in its first quarter. The firm, which accounts for about one in every £10 spent in British shops, yesterday said sales at British stores open more than a year, excluding fuel and VAT sales tax, fell 1.5 percent in the 13 weeks to May 26. That compares with analyst forecasts of a fall of 1 to 2 percent, according to a Reuters poll, and a decline of 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter to Feb. 25, which included a fall of 2.3 percent over the Christmas trading period that prompted the retailer’s first profit warning in more than 20 years.
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