COMMUNICATIONS
Samsung profits slip
Samsung Electronics Co expects its second-quarter earnings to be “not that good,” chief financial officer Lee Sang-hoon said. The company is expected to post operating profit of 8.4 trillion won (US$8.2 billion) in the three months ending June, according to the average of 35 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Samsung’s earnings have slipped from a record 10.2 trillion won in the third quarter of last year as sales of its Galaxy devices are squeezed by Apple Inc iPhones in the high-end market and inexpensive Chinese producers in the budget segment.
FRANCE
Growth is disappointing
France’s state statistics agency dealt a blow to French President Francois Hollande’s government on Tuesday as it said the economy would grow less then predicted this year and unemployment would rise. The INSEE statistics agency said the French economy would grow by only 0.7 percent this year, lower than a government prediction of 1 percent. It said unemployment would rise in the second quarter by 0.1 point to 9.8 percent and stay at that level until the end of this year. France’s economy grew by only 0.4 percent last year.
GERMANY
Consumers more confident
Consumer confidence in Germany is rising again, buoyed by the European Central Bank’s recent decision to cut interest rates, a new poll found yesterday. Looking ahead to next month, market research company GfK’s headline household confidence index was forecast to rise to 8.9 points next month from 8.6 points this month. For the past four months, the index has stagnated.
UTILITIES
Paris selling GDF Suez stake
France’s cash-strapped government on Tuesday put its 3.1 percent stake in energy giant GDF Suez up for sale, in a bid to raise funds to buy a controlling stake in Alstom. At the close, GDF Suez shares stood at 20.8 euros, valuing the sale at 1.56 billion euros (US$2.1 billion). The proceeds from the sale of 75 million shares to selected investors “can be used to finance the state’s purchase of a stake in Alstom,” France’s economy and finance ministers said in a statement.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota launches fuel cells
Japanese auto giant Toyota will start selling its first fuel cell sedan this financial year, with a price tag of around ¥7 million (US$70,000), the company announced yesterday. The vehicles will be rolled out by March and beyond the home market during the summer of next year, it said, in a move that will see the environmentally friendly cars available in the US and Europe. This is the first time Toyota has given a specific timeframe for its fuel cell cars, which it had previously said would go on the market next year.
FINANCE
Briton sentenced for fraud
A former senior Credit Suisse investment banker was sentenced on Tuesday in New York for hiding US$100 million in losses on sub-prime mortgage bonds in the 2007 US housing market collapse. David Higgs had already pleaded guilty in 2012 to charges of falsifying the Swiss bank’s records, and agreed to cooperate in the probe of several Credit Suisse officials, and so was sentenced to time served, the US Justice Department said. The British citizen was also ordered to pay nearly US$1 million in fines and forfeiture of gains.
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