Growth in Chinese industrial companies’ profits slowed last month as the economy cooled, costs rose and prices fell on moderating demand and overcapacity.
Net income increased 6.3 percent from a year earlier to 502.4 billion yuan (US$82 billion), the Beijing-based National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said yesterday, down from a 15.5 percent pace in May.
Profit from main business operations fell 2.3 percent after an 8.8 percent gain the previous month, the bureau said.
Industrial companies’ profits in the first six months of the year rose 11.1 percent to 2.58 trillion yuan, down from a 12.3 percent gain in the January-May period, and sales rose 11.4 percent to 47.8 trillion yuan, the data showed.
Profit from main business operations, a measure the statistics bureau started releasing last month, rose 7.2 percent in the first six months, slowing from an 11.4 percent pace in the January-May period.
The report covers companies with annual sales of 20 million yuan and above in 41 industry categories. Among those, 30 reported higher profits and one showed a loss, the NBS said.
The moderation in profit growth was due to a slowdown in sales gains, higher raw-material costs and a high comparative base in June last year, statistics bureau official He Ping (何平) said in an analysis of the data posted on the Web site.
Profits in coal extraction and washing slumped 43 percent in the first six months, the report showed, as prices slumped and output declined. Earnings in non-ferrous metals extraction, including copper, aluminum and lead, fell 9 percent, while and non-ferrous metals smelting and processing dropped 14.5 percent.
First-half profits in agriculture and food processing rose 21 percent, textiles increased 19 percent and auto manufacturing climbed 20 percent, the data show.
China’s government set an economic growth target of 7.5 percent this year. Expansion slowed to 7.5 percent from a year earlier in the April-June period from 7.7 percent in the first quarter.
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],”