JAPAN
Inflation target ambitious
Consumer inflation slowed further last month, official data showed Friday, stoking concerns about Tokyo’s war on deflation. The nation’s core consumer inflation, stripping out volatile fresh food prices, was 3.1 percent year-on-year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said. Excluding the impact of the sales tax increase in April, the rise in core consumer prices was 1.1 percent, Dow Jones Newswires said, quoting a formula by the Bank of Japan. The rate is well short of the bank’s ambitious 2 percent inflation target for next year.
GERMANY
Consumer confidence falling
Consumer confidence in Germany is fading, weighed down by concerns about the economic fallout from geopolitical crises, market research company GfK said in a statement yesterday. Looking ahead to next month, GfK’s headline household confidence index was forecast to fall to 8.3 points from 8.6 points this month, according to GfK’s latest poll. Earlier this week, data showed the widely watched Ifo business climate index for this month fell to its lowest level in 17 months.
BANKING
LBG to sell US$260m shares
Britain’s bailed-out Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) said on Thursday that it will sell another tranche of shares in its TSB division. LBG said in a statement that it will offload 11.5 percent of TSB, or 57.5 million shares, worth about £160 million (US$260 million), in a placing to institutional investors. “Following the sale, the group expects to retain approximately 50 percent of the issued share capital of TSB,” LBG said. The group itself remains 25 percent-owned by the British government.
AUTOMAKERS
Chrysler recalls cars
Chrysler recalled almost 350,000 older-model cars on Thursday over an ignition-switch problem that could cause a loss of engine power or reduced braking power. The company said it knew of one “minor” accident that was possibly related to the problem, but that it was “unaware of any related injuries.” Chrysler’s safety recall affects 349,442 model-year 2008 cars, made before May 12, 2008. A majority of 292,224 were in the US.
SPORTSWEAR
World Cup boosts Nike sales
Nike Inc, the world’s largest sporting-goods maker, posted first-quarter profit that topped analysts’ estimates after the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament boosted sales. Net income in the quarter which ended on Aug. 31 rose 23 percent to US$962 million, or US$1.09 a share, from US$779 million, or US$0.86 a share, a year earlier, the Oregon-based company said on Thursday. Total sales in the quarter rose 15 percent to US$7.98 billion, Nike said.
MEMORY CHIPS
Micron sales rise 49%
Micron Technology Inc, the largest US maker of computer memory chips, said fiscal fourth-quarter sales rose 49 percent, exceeding analysts’ estimates, as corporate demand for personal computers boosted prices. Revenue in the period which ended on Aug. 28 climbed to US$4.23 billion, the Idaho-based company said in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Profit excluding certain costs was US$0.82 a share. Micron is the only remaining US manufacturer of DRAM semiconductors that provide the main memory in PCs. The company’s other main business is producing and selling NAND flash chips.
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
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
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],”
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