UNITED STATES
Retail sales fall 0.3 percent
Retail sales last month fell 0.3 percent after edging up 0.1 percent in July amid weak purchases of automobiles and a range of other goods, the Department of Commerce said on Thursday. Excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services, retail sales last month slipped 0.1 percent after a similar drop in July. Economists had forecast overall retail sales slipping 0.1 percent and core sales climbing 0.3 percent last month. Also on Thursday, the Federal Reserve said in a report that manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent last month, reversing July’s increase. Output was hurt by declines in the production of nondurable goods. The reports, which extended the previous month’s run of weak data, prompted economists to cut their growth estimates for the third quarter.
CANADA
Household debt tops GDP
Household debt exceeded the country’s GDP for the first time as liabilities climbed to a fresh record relative to disposable income. Household debt rose to 100.5 percent of GDP in the second quarter, from 98.7 percent, Statistics Canada said on Thursday. Credit market debt, such as mortgages, increased to 167.6 percent of after-tax income, from 165.2 percent in the first quarter. For the first time since the start of 2010, mortgages stopped increasing in the share of total household debt, remaining at 65.6 percent, Statistics Canada said. Total credit market consumer debt rose 2 percent in the second quarter, faster than the 0.5 percent gain in disposable income.
ENGINEERING
Siemens might beat forecast
Siemens AG CEO Joe Kaeser on Wednesday said that Europe’s biggest engineering company might beat its earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending this month, while the longer-term outlook is clouded by political concerns. Siemens has raised its financial target twice this year, last month saying that it expects earnings per share of between 6.50 euros and 6.70 euros (US$7.30 and US$7.53). Siemens’s guidance for the current financial year also includes “moderate” revenue growth, net of currency effects, and orders accelerating with a book-to-bill ratio “clearly” above 1.
AUTOMAKERS
FCA, BAIC mull joint venture
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCA) and Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co Ltd (BAIC, 北京汽車集團) are exploring a joint venture, which would be the Italian carmaker’s second partnership in China after its tie-up with Guangzhou Automobile Group Co (廣州汽車集團), according to people familiar with the matter. The discussions are at an early stage, the people said. “It is our wish to continuously grow our business in China. In an effort to achieve this goal, FCA will investigate potential new projects as part of our ongoing business,” the company said by e-mail.
SOFTWARE
Oracle misses estimates
Oracle Corp on Thursday reported quarterly revenue that fell short of analysts’ estimates, highlighting its struggles to transition to new cloud-based services amid the sluggish performance of its traditional database and business software. Fiscal first-quarter revenue fell 1.7 percent to US$8.6 billion, falling short of estimates of US$8.7 billion, with cloud revenue increasing 59 percent in the quarter ended on Aug. 31. Net income rose 4.9 percent to US$1.8 billion. Profit excluding certain items was US$0.55 per share in the period. Analysts on average had forecast profit of US$0.58.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained