RETAIL
Wal-Mart sales increase
US retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc reported slightly higher quarterly sales on Thursday and said better-than-expected earnings reflected the benefits of heavy investment to boost worker salaries and improve the shopping experience. However, executives described US consumers as still cautious and acknowledged that steep investments in e-commerce have yet to pay off. The world’s largest retailer reported US$115.9 billion in sales for its first quarter, up 0.9 percent from a year earlier. However, net income fell 7.8 percent to US$3.1 billion. Wal-Mart expects the solid performance to continue in the second quarter, projecting per-share earnings to be between US$0.85 and US$1.08.
AUTOMAKERS
Daimler glum over trucks
Daimler AG said its truck unit’s profit will be “significantly lower” this year and increased its estimate for costs related to recalls of defective Takata Corp airbags. Daimler Trucks’ earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) will drop from last year’s record 2.7 billion euros (US$3.03 billion) as demand shrinks more rapidly than expected in North America and the Middle East, the Stuttgart-based company said in a statement on Thursday. Even with that projection and the airbag recall spending, Daimler is sticking to a forecast for group EBIT from ongoing business to rise slightly this year.
MAURITIUS
Tourism prediction raised
The government yesterday said that tourism revenue this year would be 1.9 percent higher than it had previously forecast after a surge in visitors in the first quarter. Tourism earnings are expected to reach 55 billion Mauritian rupees (US$1.56 billion) this year, up from an earlier forecast of 54 billion rupees, according to the government’s statistics office. Last year, tourism earnings totaled 50.2 billion rupees. The office also raised its forecast for this year’s arrivals to 1,240,000 from 1,230,000 tourists, compared with 1,151,723 last year. In the first quarter, the nation attracted 327,836 tourists, up 12.5 percent from a year earlier.
BRAZIL
Petrobras gets new CEO
Former energy minister Pedro Parente has been named by Acting President Michel Temer as the new chief executive officer of state-run oil giant Petrobras. Petrobras is the epicenter of a sprawling corruption scandal that has rocked politics and the economy since 2014. Parente was picked on Thursday to replace Aldemir Bendine, an appointee of now suspended President Dilma Rousseff. Parente is widely known to Brazilians as the “blackout minister,” due to his efforts during energy rationing in 2001.
MACHINERY
Applied Materials upbeat
Applied Materials Inc, the biggest maker of machinery used to manufacture semiconductors, forecast this quarter’s sales might beat analysts’ estimates, buoyed by a surge in demand from chipmakers as they upgrade production technology. The company received US$3.45 billion in new orders in the quarter ended May 1, a leap of 52 percent from the prior three months. Machines that make flash memory, used as storage in mobile phones and tablets, provided 49 percent of Applied’s total of US$1.97 billion in chip equipment orders. That area is being boosted by the switch to chips called 3D NAND. Companies that manufacture smartphone displays also flooded Applied’s order books as they shift to new processes.
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
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
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