UNITED STATES
Economy picking up pace
The economy picked up pace since November, the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book survey of regional activity showed on Wednesday. “Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicated that economic activity has expanded since the previous Beige Book report, with all twelve Districts characterizing the pace of growth as either modest or moderate,” the report said. Christmas season sales were “modestly” higher from 2011, and the economies of New Jersey and neighboring New York State, heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy in October, were rebounding, the Fed said. However, it added that trends in unemployment and prices were “relatively unchanged,” putting no pressure on the Fed to tighten monetary policy in its next policy meeting on Jan. 29 and Jan. 30.
INTERNET
EBay beats forecasts
EBay Inc finished last year with a flourish as bargain-hunting holiday shoppers flocked to its Internet shopping mall and digital payment service to help lift the company’s fourth-quarter earnings above analysts’ projections. The results announced on Wednesday showed eBay earned US$757 million, or US$0.57 per share, during the final three months of last year. That represented a 62 percent decrease from net income of US$2 billion, or US$1.51 per share, at the same time in 2011. Revenue climbed 18 percent from the previous year to nearly US$4 billion, in line with analysts’ forecasts. For all of last year, eBay earned US$2.6 billion, or US$1.99 per share, on revenue of US$14.1 billion.
RETAIL
Carrefour ekes out growth
French company Carrefour SA says it eked out sales growth in the fourth quarter, boosting its annual results as it looks to Latin America amid sinking sales in Europe. The company — Europe’s largest retailer by sales — said in a statement yesterday that sales in the quarter were up 0.8 percent to 22.9 billion euros (US$30.4 billion). It said sales for all of last year were up 1 percent to 86.6 billion euros. Sales in Europe were down all year, with big drops in Spain and Italy, while those in Latin America were up nearly 5 percent in the fourth quarter.
TECHNOLOGY
Renesas to cut more jobs
Struggling Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp said yesterday it plans to widen an early retirement scheme as it scrambles to cut costs to shore up its bleeding balance sheet. The company said it had proposed to its labor union that more than 3,000 jobs be added to an existing plan to slash 11,500 positions through voluntary reductions and factory floor cuts. “Now the total number of job cuts is expected to reach about 15,000,” a Renesas spokeswoman said, adding that no upper limit had been set on reductions, which amount to about a third of its workforce. Employees aged 40 and over would be eligible, the company said.
AUSTRALIA
Unemployment rate rises
Employers unexpectedly cut payrolls last month and the unemployment rate rose, signaling weakness outside the mining industry is discouraging hiring. The number of people employed fell by 5,500 after a revised 17,100 gain in November, the statistics bureau said yesterday. The jobless rate rose to 5.4 percent compared with a revised 5.3 percent the previous month. The data validate the Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to lower the benchmark interest rate last month, the fourth reduction last year.
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