PHARMACEUTICALS
Merck Q4 profit rises 6.3%
Merck KGaA posted fourth-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates on sales of its pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and excluding some costs, rose 6.3 percent to 933.4 million euros (US$1.03 billion), the Darmstadt, Germany-based company said in a statement yesterday. That is higher than the 912.7 million euro average of seven analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Merck chief executive officer Karl-Ludwig Kley has spent the last eight years restructuring the conglomerate, which has not launched a new drug in more than a decade.
LUXURY GOODS
Rumors fuel Burberry stock
Burberry Group PLC rose as much as 5 percent to £14.34 at 8am in London on speculation that the UK’s biggest luxury-goods producer is setting up defenses against a potential takeover offer. Burberry asked its advisers at Robey Warshaw to help prepare for a bid after a mystery investor built up a stake of about 5 percent in the trenchcoat maker, the Financial Times said, citing people close to the matter that it did not identify. The company asked HSBC Holdings PLC, which is the custodian for the stake, to identify the client, although the bank refused, the newspaper said. The stock has dropped 27 percent in the past year.
MACROECONOMICS
German production rises
German industrial production jumped more than forecast in January, in a sign that strong domestic demand might be helping to underpin factories even as external growth cools. Production, adjusted for seasonal swings, climbed 3.3 percent from the prior month after retreating a revised 0.3 percent in December last year, data from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy in Berlin showed yesterday. That is the first increase in three months and compares with a median estimate of 0.5 percent growth in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The gauge rose 2.2 percent from a year earlier. Germany’s inflation rate dropped to minus-0.2 percent last month, the weakest figure in more than a year.
ENERGY
Gorgon producing LNG
Chevron Corp’s US$4 billion Gorgon liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, the largest resource development in Australia’s history, has started producing the super-cooled fuel. The project, whose partners include Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp, is due to ship its first cargo next week, Chevron said in a statement. The development is located on the Barrow Island nature reserve off northwest Australia. Gorgon is starting as weaker oil prices threaten revenue projections for LNG export developments, which typically have long-term sales contracts tied to the value of crude.
INVESTMENT
Loan-linked bonds on offer
JPMorgan Chase & Co is marketing a package of bonds tied to unsecured consumer loans that were originated by LendingClub Corp, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The securities are backed by some of the US$1 billion of loans that JPMorgan bought from Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc earlier this year, and are split into two offerings, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Bond sales tied to personal loans made over the Internet have grown over the past two years.
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