TELECOMS
Sprint cuts 452 jobs
Sprint Corp has cut 452 jobs from its Overland Park headquarters as part of a previously announced cost-cutting effort, the nation’s third-biggest cellphone carrier disclosed in a filing with the Kansas Department of Commerce on Friday. The report covers the first installment of layoffs planned throughout this month. It does not cover any job losses outside the headquarters campus, although they are believed to be happening too, the Kansas City Star reported. The company said earlier this month in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs to better compete with AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications. Sprint said it would book a US$160 million charge in its fiscal second quarter to cover the layoffs. Friday’s disclosure said the local cuts were permanent and more would come.
RETAIL
Tesco to revise earnings
The world’s third-largest retailer, Tesco, is scheduled to state next week that it overestimated earnings by less than the £250 million (US$322 million) which it previously announced, Sky news reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed banking source. Sky said on its Web site that when the firm reports its delayed first-half results on Thursday, the gap would fall “somewhere close to the middle” between £200 million and £250 million. The 95-year-old supermarket chain is suffering its worst ever crisis after issuing three profit warnings in 64 days this year. It said last month that an accounting mistake had overvalued first-half profits by £250 million. The firm is expected to update the market on Thursday of the progress of its own investigation into the error being conducted by auditors Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd and law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP.
GAS
Ukraine, Russia agree price
Ukrainian and Russian leaders have reached a preliminary agreement on a price for supplies this winter, but Kiev might need international help to pay, Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko said on Saturday. Poroshenko met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Milan, Italy, on Friday to discuss the conflict in the east, where pro-Russian separatists are fighting Kiev government forces. Russia cut off supplies in mid-June following more than two years of dispute on the price. Russia said Ukraine had to pay off large debts before it would resume supply. “Until March 31, we will fix the price at US$385,” Poroshenko said in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels. An agreement signed in 2009 by former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko called on Ukraine to pay Russia US$485 per 1,000m3. Kiev is contesting the contract in a Stockholm arbitration court.
CHINA
Growth slowest since 2009
Economic growth in the third quarter fell to its slowest since the depths of the global financial crisis more than five years ago, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) survey said. The nation’s GDP is predicted to have risen 7.2 percent year-on-year in the July-to-September period, a poll of 17 economists showed. The median forecast for the world’s second-largest economy, a key driver of global growth, would be the worst since the first quarter of 2009, when growth stagnated at 6.6 percent. The government plans to release the official GDP figure tomorrow. The analysts polled expect the economy to grow 7.3 percent this year, unchanged from the previous forecast three months ago, but slower than actual growth of 7.7 percent last year.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to