AUTOMAKERS
Nissan profit jumps 14%
Japanese auto giant Nissan yesterday said its full-year net profit jumped 14 percent, boosted by a weaker yen, cost-cutting efforts and brisk sales. Japan’s second-biggest automaker said it earned ¥389 billion (US$3.8 billion) for the fiscal year to March, after sales rose 20 percent on the previous year to ¥10.48 trillion. The figures come after rival Toyota last week posted a record annual net profit of ¥1.82 trillion over the fiscal year to March, nearly doubling from a year earlier. For the current fiscal year, Nissan forecast slight gains in both profit and sales, projecting ¥405 billion in net profit and sales of ¥10.79 trillion in the year to March next year.
MANUFACTURING
Hitachi dims forecast
Hitachi Ltd unexpectedly forecast a drop in profit this year as the Japanese manufacturer projected declining revenue from its power and industrial systems businesses following a unit merger with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Net income in the year ending in March may be ¥230 billion, the company said yesterday in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. That lagged behind the ¥310 billion average of 21 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Hitachi reported net income of ¥265 billion for the year ended in March, beating the ¥246.2 billion average estimate. Operating profit may increase 5.1 percent to ¥560 billion in the current fiscal year while sales may drop to ¥9.4 trillion from ¥9.6 trillion, the company said.
AIRLINES
Emirates snubs Qantas
Emirates is not planning to buy a stake in Australian airline Qantas, a report said yesterday, despite Australia moving to loosen foreign ownership restrictions on the struggling carrier. Canberra wants to alter ownership rules to allow greater foreign investment in the national airline, to help Qantas raise much-needed capital and put it on a more even footing with domestic competitors. However, Emirates chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said his company, the Middle East’s largest airline whose profits surged 43 percent last year, had no plans to buy a stake.
MERGERS
Group eyes packager Mauser
US private equity group Clayton, Dubilier and Rice (CD&R) yesterday said that it plans to acquire German packaging specialist Mauser for about 1.2 billion euros (US$1.7 billion). CD&R said in a statement that it expects to complete the transaction in the third quarter. With revenues last year of 1.2 billion euros, Mauser manufactures and supplies plastic and steel drums and intermediate bulk containers for the chemical, industrial and food and beverage industries, among others. It employs a workforce of 4,400 at 57 production facilities in 18 countries.
COFFEE
Vietnamese reserves plunge
Coffee sales by growers in Vietnam, the biggest producer of robusta beans used by Nestle SA, may slow after stockpiles slumped 54 percent from an all-time high. Unsold reserves shrank to 390,000 tonnes at the end of last month, or about 23 percent of the record 1.7 million tonne crop, according to the median of 10 trader and shipper estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That is less than 27 percent at the same time last year and the 25 percent average in the past five years, the survey shows. Inventories were 850,000 tonnes in the week ended March 7, a record for that time of year.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts