Renault SA’s profit jumped 44 percent last year as the French automaker gained market share in Europe on the back of new models, including the Kadjar sport utility vehicle (SUV).
Operating profit climbed to 2.32 billion euros (US$2.62 billion) from 1.61 billion euros the previous year, Europe’s third-largest automaker said in a statement yesterday. That beat the 2.02 billion euros average of eight analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Renault forecast higher sales and an improved operating margin this year, with European car demand projected to increase by 2 percent.
Photo: AFP
Renault chief executive Carlos Ghosn is pushing the French manufacturer to lift margins to balance out its alliance with more profitable partner Nissan Motor Co. To this end, Renault is rolling out more SUVs like the Kadjar and plans to revive the Alpine sports car.
The profitability push has been hampered by expansion into Russia and other emerging markets such as Brazil, where slumping economies have sapped demand.
Renault reached its operating margin target of 5 percent “sooner than planned,” Ghosn said in a statement.
“We must now achieve our revenue target while maintaining a margin in excess” of that level, he said.
Sales rose 10 percent to 45.3 billion euros last year. Renault’s profit margin rose to 5.1 percent from 3.9 percent in 2014.
Nissan reported a 6.6 percent return on sales in the nine months through December last year.
Renault raised its dividend proposal to 2.40 euros per share from 1.90 euros the previous year.
Renault wrote down the value of its holding in AvtoVAZ, the leader in the Russian car market, by 225 million euros to 91 million euros. Renault said it’s in talks with other shareholders to recapitalize AvtoVAZ, which could lead to it being consolidated in Renault’s accounts.
The French automaker forecast industry-wide demand in Russia would decline an additional 12 percent this year.
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