AUTOMAKERS
Toyota to raise production
Toyota Motor plans to raise domestic production from next month until September by about 10 percent from its earlier estimate thanks to the recent weak yen, it was reported yesterday. Toyota has already revised up planned output for next month and May by 10 percent to between 13,000 and 13,500 vehicles a day and it now intends to keep production at that level until September, the Nikkei business daily said. The weakening Japanese currency is seen pushing up exports of the Corolla and Prius to North America, as well as vehicles for the Middle Eastern market, the newspaper said. Domestic output for the nine months to September is expected to reach 2.5 million units, topping the earlier plan by some 200,000 units, it said, adding that the firm may revise up its annual estimate of 3.1 million units.
FOOD
PepsiCo denies acquisition
PepsiCo Inc says it is not interested in any big acquisitions after a report suggested a major snack food deal could bring its Doritos under the same roof as Oreos. The Purchase, New York, company, which dominates the salty snack market with Frito-Lay, issued a short statement on Friday after the Telegraph of London said activist investor Nelson Peltz could push it to merge with Mondelez, which is known for sweets including Cadbury and Nabisco. The report cited unnamed sources as saying Peltz, who is known for making big investments then forcing change, has been building stakes in the two companies in recent weeks. PepsiCo has long been the subject of speculation that it would spin off its underperforming beverage business. CEO Indra Nooyi tried to squash such talk last year with a “Power of One” marketing campaign that featured the company’s sodas alongside its chips.
FINANCE
JPMorgan endorses Dimon
JPMorgan Chase’s board on Friday “strongly” endorsed Jamie Dimon to continue serving as both chairman and chief executive despite last year’s embarrassing US$6.2 billion trading loss in the “London Whale” debacle. JPMorgan had “strong” performance under Dimon “during a time when many other financial institutions with independent chairs experienced great difficulty,” the company said in its annual proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
ENGINEERING
Bosch to quit solar sector
German engineering company Bosch on Friday said that it is abandoning its solar energy business, because there is no way to make it economically viable amid overcapacity and huge price pressure in the industry. The solar power industry has been hit by falling subsidies, weaker sales and increasingly stiff price competition, especially by Chinese manufacturers. Robert Bosch GmbH’s move came after German industrial conglomerate Siemens announced in October last year that it would give up its lossmaking solar business. Bosch said that it would stop making products such as solar cells, wafers and modules at the beginning of next year. It is to sell a plant in Venissieux, France, and is abandoning a plan to build a new plant in Malaysia.
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
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by