ELECTRONICS
Sony plans to raise capital
Sony Corp said it expects to raise as much as ¥300 billion (US$2.4 billion) after setting a price for new common shares it is selling to raise money to boost chipmaking capacity. The shares are to be offered at ¥3,420.5 apiece to investors, the electronics maker and entertainment producer said in a statement yesterday. That is about 3 percent less than yesterday’s closing price. The company is also offering ¥120 billion in bonds due in 2022 and convertible to shares at ¥5,008. Sony president Kazuo Hirai said that after years of losses and restructuring, the company is beginning a growth phase. He pledged “aggressive investments” into areas including imaging sensors for smartphone cameras, video game network services and virtual-reality gear.
ENERGY
Fund barred from wind power
Wind farming in Australia suffered another setback after the government banned its A$10 billion (US$7.4 billion) renewable energy fund from investing in the industry. The government sent a letter to the Clean Energy Finance Corp outlining new proposed investment priorities, including a shift away from wind power, Australian Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Robb said on Sunday in an interview on Sky News TV. The fund should be “investing in new and emerging technologies and certainly not existing wind farms,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott later told reporters in Darwin. His government’s policy is to eventually abolish the fund, he said. The country will seek to produce 33,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity from large-scale renewable energy projects by 2020.
SWITZERLAND
Strong franc hurts start-ups
The country’s strong currency is holding back entrepreneurs, threatening the country’s top ranking for innovation. The number of companies going into business has declined this year, signaling that the surge in the franc since the country abandoned its currency cap is discouraging would-be start-ups. The government added 20,737 new names to its registry of companies doing business in Switzerland in the first half of the year, 502 less than in the same period last year, according to startups.ch, a Winterthur-based company that tracks the numbers. Barring a burst of activity in the second half, this year is expected to be the first year since 2012 that the number of start-ups has declined. That could bode ill for the economy, Raiffeisen Schweiz economist Roland Klaeger said in Zurich. Startups.ch CEO Walter Regli blames the franc, which has strengthened against the euro since the Swiss National Bank abandoned its cap on the franc.
BREWERIES
Heineken invests in Myanmar
International brewers are trickling into Myanmar, betting that higher incomes and economic reforms will whip up a thirst for foreign beer in a market that has long been dominated by state-owned firms. Heineken NV, the world’s third-largest brewer, on Sunday opened a US$60 million brewery joint venture outside of Yangon, returning to one of Asia’s most promising beer markets after exiting in 1997 amid global condemnation of the human rights abuses of the military government at that time. Heineken’s Regal Seven beer is set to rival the Tuborg and Yoma brands by Carlsberg, which in May became the first foreign brewer to set up in Myanmar. Myanmar’s beer industry is dominated by state-backed Myanmar Brewery, and beer consumption rates are some of the lowest in Asia at just 3.2 liters per person in 2013, according to Euromonitor International LTD.
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