ELECTRONICS
Sharp announces losses
Japanese consumer electronics giant Sharp Corp on Tuesday reversed its fiscal year profit forecast, warning that it would instead lose about US$256 million, largely owing to a slump in its television business. The maker of Aquos brand electronics said it now expects to book a ¥30 billion (US$256 million) shortfall in the year to next month, after earlier predicting a profit of the same amount, while sales would come in at ¥2.9 trillion. Sharp, which lost ¥7.2 billion in the nine months to December last year, had warned earlier that its full-year earnings would miss previous forecasts owing to a “deterioration” in sales at home and fierce competition in the LCD business.
PETROLEUM
BP profits fall with oil prices
BP PLC said fourth-quarter profit fell as oil prices slumped, forcing Europe’s third-largest oil company to cut spending. Profit adjusted for one-time items and inventory changes dropped to US$2.2 billion from US$2.8 billion a year earlier, the London-based company said in a statement yesterday. That beat the US$1.6 billion average forecast of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The results were bolstered by better-than-expected income from BP’s 20 percent holding in Russian state-run oil producer OAO Rosneft. A slump in oil prices to less than US$50 per barrel from more than US$100 seven months ago has forced producers to review projects, slash spending and sell assets as they try to safeguard returns to investors. BP CEO Bob Dudley told staff last week their pay would be frozen this year, while the company cut jobs in the North Sea, Azerbaijan and Trinidad and Tobago.
CENTRAL BANKS
RBI maintains interest rates
India’s central bank kept interest rates unchanged yesterday, three weeks after announcing an unscheduled cut, signaling that it wants to wait for the government’s annual budget before easing further. After a meeting in the financial capital Mumbai, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said the benchmark repo rate, at which it lends to commercial banks, would stay at 7.75 percent. RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said the bank was waiting for further signs of slowing inflation, along with the government’s budget, which is due to be delivered on Feb. 28. Most economists predicted yesterday’s rate would remain on hold after the RBI surprised investors with a 25-basis-point cut on Jan. 15, partly citing cooling inflation, in the first reduction in 20 months.
FINANCIAL
Mitsubishi profits jump 36%
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc’s third-quarter profit unexpectedly rose 36 percent, led by income from loans abroad and investment banking. Net income at Japan’s largest bank climbed to ¥348.3 billion in the three months ended on Dec. 31 last year from ¥255.2 billion a year earlier, figures derived from a nine-month earnings statement showed yesterday. That beat the ¥231.9 billion average estimate of six analysts surveyed. Mitsubishi UFJ joined Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc and Mizuho Financial Group Inc in refraining from raising full-year profit projections, even after the three lenders achieved at least 95 percent of their targets. The banks are expanding lending abroad as falling interest rates triggered by the Bank of Japan’s monetary easing curb loan profitability at home.
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