FRANCE
Growth will hold: Insee
Growth will hold up in the first half in the face of a slowing global economy as consumer spending and investment bolster domestic demand, national statistics office Insee said on Thursday. The economy will expand 0.4 percent in both the first and the second quarters, compared with 0.3 percent in the final three months of last year, Insee said. Corporate investment will grow 0.7 percent and 0.8 percent consecutively and consumer spending will climb 0.8 percent and 0.4 percent, the statistics office estimates.
TECHNOLOGY
Alphabet to sell Boston
Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc, is seeking to sell its Boston Dynamics subsidiary specialized in developing and manufacturing robots, the Financial Times reported yesterday. Financial agency Bloomberg, which also reported Alphabet intends to sell the company it acquired in 2013 as part of efforts to boost its efforts in robotics, cited two people with knowledge of the company’s plans. Toyota Motor Corp and Amazon.com Inc are seen as potential buyers of Boston Dynamics, Bloomberg reported, as Alphabet “concluded that Boston Dynamics is not likely to produce a marketable product in the next few years.”
UNITED KINGDOM
BOE maintains rate
The Bank of England (BOE) has voted to keep its main interest rate on hold, it said on Thursday, faced with a weak growth outlook at home and abroad. The move by the Monetary Policy Committee to keep borrowing costs at 0.50 percent, where they have stood for seven years, comes a day after the US Federal Reserve also left rates unchanged. The BOE also maintained the amount of cash stimulus, or quantitative easing, pumping around the British economy at £375 billion (US$540 billion).
EUROZONE
Core inflation at 0.8%
Underlying inflation pressures in the 19-country eurozone were not as subdued last month as initially thought, official figures showed on Thursday. The EU’s statistical agency said the core rate, which strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, was 0.8 percent in the year to last month, up from the initial estimate of 0.7 percent. The headline number, which includes those typically more volatile items, was left unchanged at minus-0.2 percent.
REAL ESTATE
Juwai.com plans IPO
Juwai.com (居外網), a property search engine that lists real estate around the world for Chinese buyers, is seeking to go public in Australia as early as this year. The firm is raising funds from institutional investors and strategic partners before selling shares in an initial public offering (IPO) at the end of the year or in early next year, Juwai chief executive officer Charles Pittar said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. He declined to provide additional details. Juwai, based in Hong Kong and Shanghai, has 2 million unique visitors per month.
MACHINERY
Caterpillar to trail estimates
Caterpillar Inc, the biggest maker of construction and mining machinery, said first-quarter sales and profit will trail analyst estimates as miners cut billions from their investment budgets to weather a commodity rout. Sales will be US$9.3 billion to US$9.4 billion and adjusted earnings per share will be US$0.65 to US$0.70, the company said on Thursday. That is below the average estimates of US$10.2 billion and US$0.95 respectively by analysts.
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San