REAL ESTATE
US home prices climb 5.5%
US home prices rose in November, rising more than 5 percent from a year ago in the biggest increase since August 2006, when the housing market started to collapse. However, data on consumer confidence released on Tuesday was less encouraging, with moods falling to their lowest level in more than a year as Americans became more pessimistic about the economic outlook and their financial prospects in the wake of higher taxes. In a fresh sign the housing sector is on the mend, the S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas gained 0.6 percent in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, in line with economists’ forecasts. Prices in the 20 cities rose 5.5 percent year-on-year, making for the strongest yearly price increase in more than six years when prices were on their way down.
ENERGY
Judge accepts BP’s plea
A US judge accepted an agreement by BP PLC to plead guilty for its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and pay a record US$4 billion in criminal penalties for the worst offshore oil spill in US history. The company pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts related to workers’ deaths, a felony related to obstruction of Congress and two misdemeanors. It faces five years’ probation and the imposition of two monitors who will oversee its safety and ethics for the next four years. Even after settling federal criminal charges, the company faces civil penalties of up to US$21 billion and separate state claims due to be heard at a trial starting in New Orleans on Feb. 25.
ELECTRONICS
LG posts loss on EU fines
LG Electronics Inc, the world’s second-largest TV maker, unexpectedly reported a wider fourth-quarter loss because of EU price-fixing fines, slumping demand and a stronger won. The net loss was 468 billion won (US$432 million), compared with a 112 billion won loss a year earlier, Seoul-based LG said in a statement yesterday. The company was expected to make a profit of 88.8 billion won, based on the average of 21 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales were 13.5 trillion won. LG, which gets about half of its sales from TVs, was fined 491.6 million euros (US$660 million) by EU antitrust regulators last month after an industrywide probe of cathode-ray tube sales. LG made an operating profit of 107.2 billion won compared 85.6 billion won. The TV maker earns about 80 percent of its revenue overseas.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Hynix beats profit forecast
SK Hynix Inc, the world’s second-largest maker of computer chips, reported a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit on strong mobile device chip sales. Net income was 163.7 billion won, compared with a loss of 239.9 billion won a year earlier, the Icheon, South Korea-based chipmaker said in a filing yesterday. The company was expected to make a profit of 120.2 billion won, based on the average of 31 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 6.5 percent to 2.72 trillion won. Increased production of chips for Apple Inc iPhones and other mobile devices helped Hynix offset waning demand for DRAM chips. The chipmaker is also gaining from growing demand from Chinese electronics companies, which buy more than half of its mobile chips, according to Hwang Min Seong, a Hong Kong-based Samsung Securities Co analyst.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts