TECHNOLOGY
Sharp eyes restructuring
Japan’s Sharp Corp yesterday said that it is considering restructuring options after a newspaper reported the struggling electronics maker is seeking aid from two of its main lenders. The company is drafting a new medium-term business plan, and no decision has been made on restructuring, Osaka, Japan-based Sharp said in a statement filed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange. There are no plans to revise earnings forecasts at this time, it added. Sharp is seeking to raise about ¥200 billion (US$1.67 billion) from a debt-for-equity swap with lenders, alongside share sales, the Nikkei business daily reported. The company’s net loss this fiscal year may widen to ¥100 billion from the current forecast for a loss of ¥30 billion, the report said.
MACROECONOMICS
S Korea inflation slows
South Korea’s inflation hit its lowest level in more than 15 years last month amid slumping oil prices, S Korean government data showed yesterday. Inflation has remained stubbornly below 1 percent for three consecutive months because of the slump in global oil prices. Consumer prices rose 0.5 percent last month from the previous year — further slowing from January’s 0.8 percent, state-run Statistics Korea said. Last month’s figure was the lowest since July 1999, when it rose 0.3 percent. Core inflation, which excludes oil and food prices, came in at 2.3 percent, also slowing from January’s 2.4 percent.
MACROECONOMICS
Swiss growth beats forecast
The Swiss economy grew twice as fast as economists predicted at the end of last year, indicating resilience before the central bank scrapped a currency cap that was shielding exporters. GDP increased 0.6 percent in the three months through December last year, after an upwardly revised 0.7 percent a quarter earlier, Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs in Bern said in a statement yesterday. Private and public consumption, as well as trade in goods, contributed to the rise in GDP in the fourth quarter, the data showed. Output rose 2 percen, it showed.
AUTOMAKERS
Takata to double output
Embattled Japanese auto supplier Takata Corp on Monday said that it would double its production of replacement airbags in the next six months in response to a massive global safety recall. Takata, under fire from safety regulators over defective airbags linked to at least five fatalities, said it had increased production of airbag replacement kits from 350,000 per month in December last year to 450,000 per month now. Output is expected to hit 900,000 in September. About 20 million vehicles produced by some of the world’s biggest automakers are being recalled due to the risk their Takata-made airbags could deploy with excessive explosive power, spraying potentially fatal shrapnel into the vehicle.
TECHNOLOGY
NASDAQ surpasses 5,000
The NASDAQ finished above 5,000 points on Monday for the first time in 15 years, capping a long-running recovery in the exchange after the dotcom bubble burst spectacularly in 2000. The tech-rich NASDAQ Composite Index jumped 44.57 points (0.90 percent) to 5,008.10, finishing above 5,000 for just the third time in its history. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 struck new records as well, as US markets marched ahead in a six-year bull run.
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