REAL ESTATE
UK house prices accelerate
British house price growth quickened more than expected this month, according to a survey released yesterday, in another sign of growing momentum in the housing market. Mortgage lender Nationwide said house prices rose 0.8 percent this month, compared with a 0.1 percent increase last month. Economists polled by Reuters had expected growth of 0.5 percent this month. House prices rose 4.5 percent year-on-year, up from a 3.7 percent annual increase last month.
BUILDING MATERIALS
TMK sells shares to cut debt
TMK PJSC, Russia’s largest pipe producer for the oil and gas industry, is selling 10 billion rubles (US$136.74 million) of shares to VTB Bank to cut its debt burden. As a part of the deal, TMK has already sold 8 percent of stock held in treasury, TMK strategy and business development vice president Vladimir Shmatovich said on a conference call with reporters after the announcement yesterday. The rest of the shares are to be delivered to the lender next year. TMK’s profit was hurt this year as oil prices declined and drilling in the US slowed. Its total debt was US$2.83 billion at the end of the third quarter.
SHIPPING
Chinese giants to merge
China will combine two of its state-owned shipping giants, the companies said, in the sector’s second multibillion-dollar merger in a month as the government pushes consolidation of state enterprises. Sinotrans & CSC Holdings Co (中外運航運), the nation’s third-largest shipping company, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of China Merchants Group (CMG, 招商局集團), a conglomerate with interests in transport, finance and property, according to company statements. Sinotrans has assets of more than 100 billion yuan (US$15.42 billion), while China Merchants holds assets of 624 billion yuan, Xinhua news agency reported.
RETAIL
Ocado stock falls sharply
Shares in British online supermarket Ocado fell sharply yesterday, which traders attributed to concerns over growing competition from a rival service at Amazon. Ocado shares were down 7.9 percent by 9:10am, making the stock the worst performer on Britain’s FTSE 250 mid-cap index and on the pan-European STOXX 600 index. Trading volumes in Ocado stock were also above the average for the rest of the UK and European markets. Patronus Partners Ltd head Paul Kavanagh and Beaufort Securities’ Graeme Hatch cited Amazon UK’s plans to expand its Pantry grocery delivery service as the main reason for the slide in Ocado’s shares.
ENERGY
Oil prices resume drop
Oil prices resumed their decline in Asia yesterday, ahead of the release of data on US crude stockpiles and production. Prices have been volatile during the holiday-shortened final week of this year and remained near multi-year lows in the face of indications a global crude supply glut is to continue into next year. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for delivery in February was down US$0.68 at US$37.19 and Brent crude for the same month was trading US$0.41 lower at US$37.38 a barrel at about 6:20am. Analysts were expecting the US Department of Energy to release data later yesterday showing that US commercial crude stockpiles in the week to Dec. 25 declined. However, Bloomberg News said that would still leave supplies more than 120 million barrels above the five-year seasonal average.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts