APPAREL
Zalando forecasts growth
Zalando SE, Europe’s biggest online fashion retailer, forecast sales growth near the high end of its projected range this year as it gains more customers. Revenue growth is to be closer to 25 percent than 20 percent, the Berlin-based company said in a statement yesterday. Earnings before interest and tax are to be between 3 percent and 4.5 percent of sales, Zalando said. Zalando has made it simpler for consumers to buy entire outfits with just a few mouse clicks, increasing average purchase size. It is also steadily boosting sales from mobile devices, now about 60 percent of its traffic.
TOBACCO
ITC shares surge 8.7 percent
ITC Ltd, India’s largest cigarette company, soared the most in more than six years as analysts said the excise tax proposed by the government on tobacco products was less steep than previous increases. The stock surged 8.7 percent to 321.45 rupees at 12:47pm in Mumbai, headed for the biggest gain since May 2009. The price might reach 370 rupees, Credit Suisse Group AG and CLSA Ltd said in notes yesterday. The government is proposing a 10 percent increase to the excise tax on cigarettes, Indian Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley told lawmakers on Monday. The increase is the lowest in five years and is a “move towards rationality,” Credit Suisse analysts Arnab Mitra and Rohit Kadam wrote in a report.
BANKING
Barclays net losses double
British bank Barclays yesterday said net losses more than doubled last year and announced plans to gradually reduce its majority stake in the group’s African unit. “We are today announcing our intention to sell down our 62.3 percent interest in our African business, BAGL, over the coming two to three years,” Barclays said in a statement and revealed annual losses after taxes of £394 million (US$550 million) for the bank as a whole.
INSURANCE
Swiss Life raises dividends
Swiss Life Holding AG, Switzerland’s biggest life insurer, plans to pay dividends above estimates after higher fee income lifted full-year profit by 7 percent. Swiss Life proposed a payout of 8.5 Swiss francs per share for last year, up from SF6.50 a year earlier, the company said in a statement yesterday. That beat the Bloomberg Dividend Forecast of SF8. Net income increased to SF878 million (US$877.5 million), compared with an SF824 million average estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The Zurich-based insurer said in November last year that it planned to pay a dividend of at least SF8 for last year and intends to distribute between 30 percent and 50 percent of profit in dividends after years of payouts that trailed its peers.
DIAMONDS
De Beers ramps up sales
De Beers is ramping up diamond sales to cash in on a recovery from last year’s slump. The company last week sold US$610 million of uncut stones at its second auction of the year, 12 percent more than a January offering that was already bigger than expected. De Beers and Russia’s Alrosa PJSC, which control almost two-thirds of the market, sold more than US$1 billion of diamonds in January, exceeding market expectations and sparking concerns that the sales might have been too much, too soon. Mining companies cut about one-quarter of global supply last year to arrest the 18 percent slump in rough diamond prices brought on by China’s economic slowdown and an industry wide credit crunch.
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
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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