Chinese industrial companies’ profits rose for a fourth month last month, adding to signs the country’s economic rebound is gaining momentum.
Net income increased 17.3 percent from a year earlier to 895 billion yuan (US$144 billion), China’s National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday, after a 22.8 percent jump in November last year. Earnings for the full year rose 5.3 percent.
Industrial profits may rise by an average 30 percent this year as the world’s second-biggest economy recovers from a seven-quarter slowdown, businesses start restocking and export demand improves, Standard Chartered PLC forecasts.
Annual industrial profits increased 25.4 percent to 5.56 trillion yuan last year, while sales for the full year rose 11 percent to 91.6 trillion yuan, the bureau said.
Among 41 industry categories covered in the report, 29 saw profits increase, 11 reported declines, and oil refining and nuclear-fuel processing recorded losses.
Earnings of power-generating and supply companies surged 69.1 percent last year as coal prices fell, while the vehicle industry’s profit rose 5.6 percent, the bureau’s data showed.
“This broadly confirms the picture we’re getting from other data that industrial and economic growth is picking up again and the pressure on output prices is diminishing,” said Louis Kuijs, chief China economist at Royal Bank of Scotland PLC in Hong Kong.
“Because of quite weak numbers in the first half of 2102, the profit numbers are likely to show strong year-on-year growth in the coming months,” he added.
China’s economic expansion will be above 8 percent this year the chairman of the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, Lou Jiwei (樓繼偉), said at a forum in Beijing on Saturday.
GDP increased 7.8 percent last year, the least since 1999, according to government data.
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
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”