MACROECEONOMICS
China unemployment drops
China’s urban unemployment rate dropped to 4.05 percent at the end of last month, from the 4.1 percent recorded at the end of last year, the Ministry of Labor said yesterday. Facing slowing economic growth, authorities have said that avoiding mass unemployment is a crucial policy priority, although the urban jobless rate is widely known to understate the real unemployment figure, a point acknowledged by the government. The government aims to create at least 10 million new jobs this year and keep the urban jobless rate below 4.5 percent.
REAL ESTATE
New home sales drop in US
Sales of new homes plummeted in the US last month, as the spring buying season opened with sharp declines in the northeast and south of the nation. Purchases of new homes have been volatile on a monthly basis, although sales during the first quarter of this year are higher than last year. The US Department of Commerce said on Thursday that new-home sales fell 11.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 481,000.
GERMANY
Business confidence high
A closely watched survey shows business confidence grew for the sixth consecutive month in Europe’s biggest economy. The Ifo institute yesterday said that its monthly confidence index rose to 108.6 points for this month from 107.9 last month. Ifo says the numbers show that the “upswing in the German economy continues.” The survey is based upon about 7,000 monthly surveys of business managers and is closely watched as a key indicator of the nation’s economic prospects.
RETAIL
Starbucks revenue rises
Starbucks Corp, the world’s biggest coffee-shop chain, on Thursday posted that sales last quarter topped estimates, fueled by an expanded menu and its increasingly popular mobile-phone app. Revenue gained 18 percent to US$4.56 billion in the January-to-March quarter, the Seattle-based company said. Analysts had estimated US$4.53 billion on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company also reiterated its full-year forecast for 16 percent to 18 percent revenue growth, saying investments in stores and its workforce would fuel its expansion.
AUTOMAKERS
Kia reports small profit
Kia Motors Corp yesterday said its first-quarter net profit rose slightly from a year earlier, despite falls in sales revenue. Net income came to 903.2 billion won (US$835.9 million) during the January-to-March period, up 3.1 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. However, operating profit plunged 30.5 percent year-on-year to 511.6 billion won, while sales revenue was down 6.3 percent at 11.18 trillion won.
INTERNET
Twitter launches ‘Highlights’
Twitter on Thursday rolled out a new feature aimed at helping users sift through the large number of tweets on their feed each day. The new feature called “Highlights” offers a twice-daily summary “of the best tweets for you, delivered via rich push notification,” Twitter’s Gordon Luk said in a blog post. It is the latest effort by Twitter to boost engagement for its members amid growth that is slower than some rival social networks.
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