MANUFACTURING
Chinese output edges up
China’s manufacturing activity expanded last month for the first time since December last year, the government said yesterday, a bright spot as the world’s second-largest economy fights a broad slowdown in growth. The official purchasing managers’ index released by the National Bureau of Statistics came in at 50.1 last month, up from 49.9 in February and the first result showing expansion since a similar 50.1 in December. A figure above 50 signals growth, while anything below indicates shrinkage.
MACROECONOMICS
Tankan poll comes in flat
Confidence among major Japanese manufacturers came in lower than market expectations, a quarterly central bank survey showed yesterday. The Bank of Japan’s closely watched Tankan survey showed confidence among large manufacturers stood at plus-12 last month, flat from the previous report and missing expectations that the level would come in at 14, although sentiment among non-manufacturers was more upbeat. The survey of more than 10,000 companies is the most comprehensive indicator of how Japan Inc is faring.
mACROECONOMICS
S Korean inflation dips
South Korean inflation dipped further last month to the lowest level in nearly 16 years as falling oil prices stoked deflationary fears, state data showed yesterday. Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent last month from a year earlier, compared with February’s 0.5 percent, state-run Statistics Korea said. Both were the lowest since July 1999 when inflation stood at 0.3 percent. Core inflation, which excludes volatile oil and food prices, also decreased to 2.1 percent, compared with 2.3 percent in February.
MANUFACTURING
Eurozone output rebounds
Eurozone manufacturing expanded faster than initially estimated last month, helped by growth in Spain and Italy, and a stronger performance in Germany, the region’s largest economy. Markit Economics said its purchasing managers’ index rose to 52.2 from 51 in February. That was the highest in 10 months and exceeded a preliminary reading of 51.9. It was also well above the 50 level that divides expansion from contraction.
MACROECONOMICS
German debt ratio shrinks
Germany’s total debt increased slightly last year, but because the economy grew, its proportion of overall output fell, the country’s central bank or Bundesbank said yesterday. “According to provisional calculations, general government debt in Germany amounted to approximately 2.168 trillion euros [US$2.3 trillion] at the end of 2014. The debt level thus increased by 2 billion [euros] on the year,” the Bundesbank said in a statement. However, because GDP also expanded, the debt ratio decreased by 2.4 percentage points to 74.7 percent, the Bundesbank said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Takeda offers to settle case
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co has offered to pay more than US$2.2 billion to resolve claims of hiding its Actos diabetes medicine’s cancer risks in what would be one of the largest US settlements of patient lawsuits targeting drugs or devices, three people familiar with the matter said. Officials at Asia’s largest drugmaker propose to settle more than 8,000 lawsuits in federal and state courts in the US, the people said. Such a deal would amount to a payment of about US$275,000 for each case.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”