GAMBLING
Macau sets earnings record
The tiny Chinese city of Macau has again smashed its annual record for casino earnings as revenues last year hit US$45 billion, further underlining its outsize position as the world’s biggest gambling market. Gambling regulator data released yesterday showed that Macau’s three dozen casinos took in 33.5 billion patacas (US$4.2 billion) last month. That brought revenue for last year to 360.8 billion patacas, up 18.6 percent from the year before. Analyst Grant Govertsen of Union Gaming Research said Macau’s take would probably be more than seven times the amount earned on the Las Vegas Strip.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung urges innovation
Samsung Electronics Co chairman Lee Kun-hee yesterday urged workers to adopt new ways of thinking and move beyond their focus on hardware as the world’s biggest maker of smartphones and televisions seeks to maintain growth. “We have to change once again,” Lee said, according to e-mailed notes from the company. “We must give a bigger push for innovations, including in business structure, so that we can lead industry trends.” Samsung shipped a record number of handsets last year and posted its highest quarterly earnings, yet its shares had their first annual decline in five years amid signs of slowing growth in high-end handsets and competition from Apple Inc’s new iPhones.
ENERGY
Russian oil output rises
Russia yesterday said that its oil output last year hit a post-Soviet high, while natural gas production of its giant Gazprom holding slipped for the second successive year. The Russian Ministry of Energy’s reporting unit said oil and gas condensate production grew by 1 percent last year to reach a new record of 523.3 million tonnes. Russia had established its previous post-Soviet high in 2012, when output stood at 10.4 million barrels per day.
SRI LANKA
Key lending rate cut
The Sri Lankan central bank yesterday cut a key lending rate by 50 basis points to 8 percent after inflation eased to its lowest level in nearly two years and as the economy shows signs of sustained growth. The move by the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka represents the fourth consecutive reduction since December 2012. The deposit rate was kept at 6.5 percent. The bank said it expected the nation’s economy to have grown 7.2 percent last year, up from 6.4 percent in 2012 after announcing last week that inflation had hit a 22-month low of 4.7 percent.
ENERGY
Repsol sells LNG assets
Spanish oil group Repsol yesterday said it has sold liquefied natural gas (LNG) assets to Royal Dutch Shell for US$4.1 billion, slashing its heavy debt load. The spanish group handed over its LNG assets in Trinidad and Tobago, and Peru to Shell, the world’s biggest LNG supplier, as part of a huge debt-reduction plan. The sale followed a smaller US$200 million sale of a Basque power plant to British Petroleum in October last year, bringing in a combined US$4.3 billion to the Spanish group. The sale generated a net US$2.9 billion in profits and capital gains for Repsol, the Spanish group said, more than had been anticipated when the deal was first announced in February last year.
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],”