AUTOMAKERS
Honda switches to English
Honda Motor Co made English the official language of global meetings, as the Japanese automaker shifts decisionmaking power to regional units. Honda CEO Takanobu Ito informed global employees of the change in April, John Mendel, executive vice president of the Tokyo-based company’s US sales unit, said in an interview at the LA Auto Show in Los Angeles. Mendel was promoted to Honda’s North American management committee last year, in an earlier move by Ito to localize business decisions. The automaker’s move follows language conversions by Japanese companies including Fast Retailing Co, Asia’s biggest apparel seller, and Rakuten Inc, the country’s biggest Internet mall.
HEALTHCARE
Novartis to buy back shares
Novartis AG plans to buy back US$5 billion in stock over two years and said it would expand in faster-growing areas of healthcare such as treatments for skin and heart diseases. The share repurchase will begin immediately, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said in a statement before its annual investor day yesterday. Novartis will develop new business segments in dermatology, heart failure, respiratory illnesses and cell therapy, it said. “Novartis has reached an inflection point, having fully integrated Alcon and reduced debt,” CEO Joseph Jimenez said. “We are now further sharpening the execution of our strategy to strengthen shareholder value through science-based innovation in high-growth segments of healthcare where we have the global scale, competitive advantage and the right capabilities to win.”
INTERNET
Drop in users hits Pandora
Pandora Media Inc, the biggest US online radio service, reported a third-quarter loss after spending more on development, marketing and overhead as it defends its turf against new competition. The net loss was US$1.7 million, or US$0.01 per share, compared with a profit of US$2.05 million a year earlier, the Oakland, California-based company said in a statement on Thursday. Excluding items, profit of US$0.06 matched the average of 22 analysts’ estimates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Pandora reported a drop in active users last month and continues to increase spending on marketing and sales staff to attract more listeners and advertisers. It has also released new programs for Apple Inc devices and new applications for Google Inc’s Android and Chromecast as total costs in the quarter jumped 53 percent to US$181.9 million from a year earlier.
ROMANIA
Credit outlook positive
Standard & Poor’s increased the outlook of Romania’s junk credit rating to “positive” from “stable” and said it may upgrade it in the second half of next year depending on fiscal rigor and sales of state assets. The country’s long-term government bond rating was maintained at “BB+,” one level below investment grade and on a par with Croatia and Indonesia, S&P said yesterday in a statement. Romania has struggled to shed its junk rating for five years, embarking on one of the US’ toughest austerity programs in 2010 by cutting state wages 25 percent and raising the value-added tax by 5 percentage points. The government secured a third international bailout loan this year and has narrowed the budget gap to an estimated 2.5 percent of GDP this year, from 7.2 percent in 2009.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to