TELECOMS
Telkom profits surge 14%
Telkom SA SOC Ltd, the South African fixed-line operator, said first-half profit increased 14 percent as the company cut staff and reduced costs. Earnings per share excluding one-time items were 2.81 rand in the six months through September, compared with 2.46 rand a year earlier, the Pretoria-based company said in a statement yesterday. Revenue rose 1.2 percent to 13.5 billion rand (US$939 million).
TELECOMS
MTN granted extra time
MTN Group Ltd said Nigerian regulators had waived yesterday’s deadline to settle a US$5.2 billion fine for failing to disconnect unregistered customers and that negotiations between the two sides continue. “Shareholders are advised that the Nigerian authorities have, without prejudice, agreed that the imposed fine would not be payable until the negotiations have been concluded,” the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement yesterday. “These discussions include matters of non-compliance and the remedial measures that may have to be adopted to address this.” The Nigerian Communications Commission imposed the penalty on MTN for failing to meet a deadline to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered subscribers.
INVESTMENT
Baer ups Kairos stakes
Julius Baer Group Ltd, Switzerland’s third-largest wealth manager, agreed to increase its stake in Milan-based Kairos Investment Management SpA to 80 percent to boost its assets under management in Italy. The private-banking group is raising its stake from 19.1 percent, the companies said in a statement yesterday without disclosing the price. The transaction is expected to close next year and the companies have agreed to pursue a listing of Kairos on the Italian stock exchange. “The partnership between Julius Baer and Kairos has proven to be a powerful force in the Italian wealth-management sector, surpassing our expectations when we started this journey in 2013,” Julius Baer chief executive officer Boris Collardi said in the statement. The Swiss company bought its initial stake in Kairos in 2013.
STEELMAKERS
‘Steel prices bottomed out’
Japan’s biggest steel producer from scrap iron has called the bottom of the global market, saying prices probably would not extend declines much further as loss-making mills have to confront their commercial limits. “Economic irrationality won’t last forever,” Kiyoshi Imamura, managing director at Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co, told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. Prices have dropped excessively, falling beyond the appropriate level in terms of profitability, Imamura said. While prices are unlikely to slide much further, it would take some time before they recover, according to Imamura.
TELECOMS
India to move toward 4G
Bharti Airtel Ltd chairman Sunil Mittal said India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is going to shake up the nation’s telecommunication industry with the start of a US$15 billion fourth-generation wireless service. The impending entry of Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd is set to force smaller operators to consolidate, Mittal said in an interview. Bharti Airtel — India’s top wireless carrier — has ramped up investment and is looking for opportunities to purchase spectrum from other companies, he said.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to