AUTOMAKERS
Rolls-Royce cuts staff
Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC was to make a second round of cuts to senior management yesterday after about a dozen top executives were let go last month as part of a continuing cost-reduction program. Fewer than 50 managers were to be given notice internally as part of Rolls-Royce’s plan to shave between £150 million and £200 million (US$215 million and US$287 million) in costs per year by next year, a spokesman said in an e-mail. Last month’s cuts included Tony Wood, head of the engine maker’s aerospace division, and Lawrie Haynes, head of land and sea.
RETAIL
Germany posts robust sales
Retailers in Germany clocked up their strongest annual increase in sales in 21 years last year, with business expanding by 2.7 percent, official data showed yesterday. Retail sales, a closely watched measure of household confidence, eased by a fractional 0.2 percent last month alone, the German federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement. However, retailers’ sales jumped by 2.7 percent during the whole of last year, which was the strongest increase since 1994, Destatis said.
AUTOMAKERS
Honda sees profit slip
Honda Motor Co’s quarterly profit slipped 19 percent as costs related to air-bag recalls eroded the benefits from growing sales. The Japanese firm yesterday reported an October-December profit of ¥124.1 billion (US$1 billion), while sales for fiscal third quarter edged up 3.4 percent to ¥3.617 trillion. Honda, which makes the Odyssey minivan, Civic sedan and Asimo humanoid robot, stuck to its forecast for profit to rise 3 percent to ¥525 billion for the fiscal year ending March.
SOFTWARE
Microsoft beats forecasts
Microsoft Corp on Thursday posted better-than-projected sales and profit, fueled by cloud services and Office productivity programs, as CEO Satya Nadella’s efforts to transform the software maker gain ground. Profit excluding certain items in the second fiscal quarter, which ended on Dec. 31, was US$0.78 per share, and sales adjusted for deferrals were US$25.7 billion, Microsoft said. Analysts on average estimated profit would be US$0.71 on revenue of US$25.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
ENERGY
PetroChina tips profit drop
Chinese energy giant PetroChina Co Ltd (中國石油天然氣) yesterday said it expects profits for last year to have fallen by 60 to 70 percent from a year earlier. Net profit is forecast to fall because of the slump in oil and domestic natural gas prices, the company said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The earnings estimates were compiled according to Chinese accounting standards.
ELECTRONICS
Apple recalls adapters
Apple Inc on Thursday announced a recall of 12 years’ worth of wall plug adapters it sold outside the US, warning of the risk of electric shock. The recall was sparked by the danger of the two-prong AC wall plug adapters breaking and shocking people who touch them, the California-based technology giant said in an online post. Apple said that it was aware of 12 incidents worldwide involving the adapters. The units targeted in the recall were designed for use in Argentina, Brazil, much of Europe, New Zealand and South Korea.
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day