UNITED STATES
Consumer confidence up
The US Conference Board on Tuesday said that its consumer confidence index rose to 98.1 this month from 96.3 last month, the second straight monthly gain. The business research group said Americans were more confident about the future, though their assessment of current economic conditions was unchanged from December. Consumers shrugged off the recent sharp fall in the stock market and signs of economic weakness overseas. From October through last month, employers added a robust average of 284,000 jobs a month. Unemployment remained at a seven-year low of 5 percent last month.
TELECOMS
TDC falls as it drops payout
TDC A/S, the Danish telecom company that has branded itself a yield-stock, yesterday fell the most in almost a decade in Copenhagen after canceling a planned 1.5 krone dividend payment and forecasting a smaller profit for this year. TDC fell as much as 19 percent, the most since April 2006, making it the day’s biggest loser in the STOXX Europe 600 Index. TDC declined 15 percent to 29.88 kroner as of 9:22am in Copenhagen, wiping 3.83 billion kroner (US$557 million) off its market value. The company said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization would fall to 8.8 billion kroner this year. That compares with an average estimate of 9.2 billion kroner in a Bloomberg survey.
COMMODITIES
Gold Fields sees lower costs
Gold Fields Ltd yesterday said that costs last year were probably lower than previous forecasts as the South African bullion producer, with mines from Australia to Peru, was helped by the strengthening of the US dollar against currencies of countries in which it operates. All-in sustaining costs for the year ending Dec. 31 would probably be US$1,020 an ounce, compared with a forecast of US$1,035 an ounce published in November, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement. Production is estimated at 2.16 million ounces, just shy of its prior forecast of 2.17 million ounces.
ENERGY
Raisio plans biomass plant
Raisio Group plans to build a 9.5-megawatt biomass power plant in southwestern Finland at a cost of about 8 million euros (U$8.7 million). The manufacturer of food products and animal feeds will use the plant to produce steam and heat in its industrial zone in the town of Raisio, the company said in a statement. The facility will burn wood chips from the local forestry industry, it said. Construction is to begin late this year, with completion set for the spring of next year. Finland generates 1.8 gigawatts of power from biomass, or about 13 percent of its electricity.
MACHINERY
Terex rises on takeover bid
Shares of heavy lifting equipment maker Terex Corp soared after the firm said it had received an unsolicited takeover offer of US$30 per share from China’s Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co (中聯重科). The bid would value Westport, Connecticut-based Terex at about US$3.3 billion. Terex said it signed a confidentiality agreement with Zoomlion and its board is reviewing the proposal. It said it would not comment further until the review is complete. Terex said in August last year that it would merge with Finland’s Konecranes PLC in a deal that would have Terex shareholders controlling 60 percent of the new firm and Konecranes the rest. Terex on Tuesday said that its board had not changed its recommendation to combine with Konecranes.
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