TRADE
Japan deficit continues
Japan reported its 20th straight monthly trade deficit last month, as soaring energy imports continued to offset the value of exported goods. The deficit totaled ¥800.3 billion (US$8 billion), up 3.5 percent from a year earlier, government figures released yesterday showed. It was a record deficit for the month of February, but lower than January’s much-larger deficit.
CURRENCY
Lithuania hopes to join euro
Lithuania hopes to follow in the footsteps of Baltic neighbors Estonia and Latvia by joining the eurozone single currency bloc next year, Lithuanian Minister of Finance Rimantas Sadzius said on Tuesday. Lithuania tried to join the now 18-member euro area in 2006-2007, but was blown off track as the global financial crisis gathered pace, plunging the economy into deep recession. Sadzius said the aim is for Lithuania to have completed negotiations by July after the European Commission submits a report on what steps Vilnius must take to ensure it meets the economic requirements for euro entry.
SOFTWARE
Oracle Q3 net profit up
Oracle said on Tuesday its fiscal third-quarter net income rose 2 percent, helped by higher cloud software subscription revenue, but investors wanted more growth and the company’s stock fell in late trading. For the three months through Feb. 28, the business software maker earned US$2.57 billion, or US$0.56 per share, up from US$2.5 billion, or US$0.52 per share, in the same quarter the year before. Revenue rose 4 percent to US$9.31 billion from US$8.96 billion.
TELECOMS
Deutsche Telekom cuts jobs
German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom will cut 4,900 jobs over the next two years from its information technology and consultancy unit T-Systems, the company said on Tuesday. “We will cut 2,700 jobs this year and 2,200 jobs next year in Germany,” a spokesman said, confirming a report by daily Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung. T-Systems generated revenue of about 9.5 billion euros (US$13 billion) last year. The company employs about 50,000 people, but the spokesman said the layoffs were only planned in home-market Germany for now.
SOFTWARE
Adobe subscribers increase
Adobe Systems Inc added online subscribers at a faster-than-projected clip in the fiscal first quarter, as the company attempts to return to growth by selling Internet subscriptions for applications such as Photoshop. The software maker added 405,000 customers for its Creative Cloud Web software, bringing the total to 1.84 million and exceeding analysts’ estimates. Sales dipped less than 1 percent to US$1 billion and profit excluding certain items declined to US$0.30 a share for the period ended Feb. 28, the company said on Tuesday.
TRAVEL
Samsonite profit jumps
US luggage maker Samsonite yesterday said its net profit jumped 18.6 percent last year. However, despite strong worldwide sales, its expansion in China was hit by an official crackdown on corruption. The firm said annual profit reached US$176.1 million last year, up from US$148.4 million in 2012, with net sales hitting a record US$2.04 billion, up 15 percent from the previous year. However, China sales only grew 5.3 percent after years of “stellar” growth, in part due to the crackdown on corruption.
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