BANKING
SoftBank profit jumps 19%
SoftBank Corp yesterday said its net profit jumped 19 percent in its fiscal first quarter owing to gains from selling some of its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), offsetting losses at US mobile unit Sprint Corp. The company, which also pointed to upbeat results in its domestic business, reported a ¥254.16 billion (US$2.4 billion) net profit in April-June period. Softbank is looking to cut its stake in Alibaba from 32.2 percent to about 28 percent, which it expects to rake in about US$10 billion.
SPORTSWEAR
Adidas raises forecast
Adidas AG increased its full-year forecast as brand sales benefited from the Euro 2016 soccer tournament and it pocketed a payment to end a sponsorship deal with England’s Chelsea soccer club early. Currency-neutral sales this year will increase in the “high teens,” Herzogenaurach, Germany-based Adidas said in a statement yesterday. That compares with previous a previous forecast for about 15 percent growth. Net income from continuing operations will increase 35 percent to 39 percent to 975 million euros (US$1.1 billion) to 1 billion euros, compared with previous guidance for a 25 percent increase.
BANKING
Credit Suisse turns profit
Credit Suisse bounced back into profit in the second quarter, earning 170 million Swiss francs (US$172 million), as it reported making progress on a major restructuring program. Plunging client activity and difficult market conditions as well as writeoffs pushed the bank into a net loss of SF302 million in the first quarter. The net profit still represented an 84 percent drop from a year ago as Credit Suisse shifts to focus on private banking and wealth management.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts