ECONOMY
China’s inflation increases
Inflation in China accelerated to 2.4 percent year-on-year last month, official data showed yesterday, above market expectations, but analysts said countermeasures were unlikely due to weak economic momentum. Month on month, the consumer price index increased by 0.2 percent last month, reversing a decrease of 0.9 percent in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. The government has set its inflation target for this year at 3.5 percent.
LABOR
Australian joblessness drops
Australia’s unemployment rate eased to 5.5 percent last month, data showed yesterday, beating expectations by creating 50,100 jobs despite a slowdown in the mining-driven economy. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the jobless rate fell 0.1 percentage points from 5.6 percent in March, outdoing analyst forecasts that unemployment would hold steady. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s unemployment rate fell 0.6 points to a three-year low of 6.2 percent in the three months to March 31, official figures released yesterday showed.
ECONOMY
Greece eyes recovery
Greece’s recession-wracked economy should start recovering from next year and its sky-high unemployment rate should edge lower from the end of next year, Greek Minister of Finance Yannis Stournaras said in an interview broadcast yesterday. Speaking on state-run NET television, Stournaras said the government’s aim was to achieve a primary surplus by the end of this year. He said this would allow Athens to ask its international creditors for some further debt relief.
CRIME
Sentence cut for Enron boss
The prison sentence of disgraced former Enron Corp chief executive Jeff Skilling could be cut by as much as 10 years under a deal announced on Wednesday by US federal prosecutors. Currently in prison on a 24-year sentence for securities fraud, false statements and other charges, Skilling could see his term reduced to between 14 years and 17-and-a-half years under the agreement that will end his long battle against conviction. District Judge Sim Lake will set his new sentencing on June 21.
UNITED STATES
Offshore earnings up 15%
Large US companies boosted their offshore earnings by 15 percent last year to a record US$1.9 trillion, avoiding hefty tax bills by keeping the profits abroad, according to a new report. The overseas earnings stockpile has climbed by 70 percent over the past five years, research firm Audit Analytics said. Data in its report covers the Russell 3000 index of the largest US corporations.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla posts quarterly profit
Tesla Motors Inc said on Wednesday that it posted its first-ever quarterly profit as the electric carmaker beat its own forecasts and surprised market analysts. The California firm said it earned a profit of US$11 million in the first quarter as revenues rose 83 percent from the prior quarter to US$562 million. It produced 400 or more Model S vehicles per week, for a total of over 5,000 during the quarter. Tesla also said it saw “significant upside potential in Europe and Asia.”
AVIATION
Dreamliner to return
All Nippon Airways confirmed yesterday that it would restart flights with Boeing Co’s Dreamliner at the start of next month.
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San