CHEMICALS
Royal DSM posts profit
Royal DSM NV, the largest vitamin manufacturer in the world, yesterday said its nutrition unit supplying ingredients for healthfoods and animal feed returned to growth in the fourth quarter, helping profit meet analyst estimates. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 3 percent to 261 million euros (US$291 million) in the fourth quarter, the Heerlen, Netherlands-based company said in a statement. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had estimated profits of 258 million euros on average. DSM, which makes vitamins, pharmaceuticals and fibers used in clothes and car parts, forecast a higher EBITDA for this year, in line with the targets it set out in its strategy for 2018.
AVIATION
More contracts at show
Boeing Co and Airbus have announced orders at the Singapore Airshow amid concern that a two-year, multibillion-dollar order spree by Asian carriers is losing steam. Chicago-based Boeing yesterday announced a US$1.3 billion order with China’s Okay Airways (奧凱), while Airbus Group SE secured an order from Philippine Airlines Inc valued at US$1.8 billion as the Southeast Asian carrier seeks to fly to New York and the US west coast. The agreement with Airbus includes an option to purchase six more of Airbus’ latest widebody jet. The order value is based on the US$308 million list price of the aircraft, before discounts that are customary in the industry.
CHEMICALS
Akzo Nobel to buy BASF unit
Akzo Nobel NV has agreed to buy a coatings business from BASF SE for 475 million euros to expand in the market for treatments to protect metal products from wind turbines to consumer goods. The coil-coatings business generated about 300 million euros in sales last year, Amsterdam-based Akzo Nobel said in a statement yesterday. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year. Akzo Nobel chief executive Ton Buechner has said he is interested in making acquisitions and pushing for growth again after years of cutting costs and selling units to bring profitability in line with industry peers.
CHEMICALS
AG Q4 profit rises 7%
AG reported a rise in profit in the fourth quarter on increased demand for catalysts used to improve efficiency in the production of industrial chemicals and plastics. EBITDA and one-time items rose 7 percent to 229 million Swiss francs (US$232 million) in the final three months of last year, the manufacturer of cosmetic ingredients and pigments said yesterday in a statement. Analysts had predicted SF225.2 million. Chief executive officer Hariolf Kottmann has restructured Clariant by cutting costs, selling off low-margin parts of the business and focusing on high-margin areas. The measures bolstered its profit margin to 14.7 percent last year from 12.7 percent in 2010.
ENERGY
RWE suspends dividends
RWE, Germany’s second-biggest power supplier, yesterday said that it would partially suspend dividend payouts after running up a loss last year as a result of collapsing wholesale prices and weak profitability in conventional power generation. RWE booked a net loss of 200 million euros last year compared with a net profit of 1.7 billion euros for 2014, due to a writedown of 2.1 billion euros on its power plants in Germany and Britain, the company said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the