FOOD
Premier Foods downbeat
Premier Foods PLC, the maker of British brands such as Mr Kipling cakes and Bisto gravy, yesterday cut its full-year profit forecast by 10 percent after saying its third-quarter sales had been weaker than expected. The company faces cost inflation in commodities such as sugar and chocolate, as well as higher imported input costs due to a weaker pound, it said. Group sales in the quarter to Dec. 31 fell 1 percent to £251.4 million (US$309.37 million) while volumes increased 3.4 percent, the company said.
DATA SERVICES
Experian revenue soars
Experian PLC, the world’s biggest credit data company, reported a 6 percent rise in third-quarter revenue from ongoing activities at constant exchange rates. The FTSE 100-listed company, best known for running consumer credit checks for banks, landlords and retailers, said revenue for the quarter that ended on Dec. 31 rose 7 percent in North America and 2 percent in the UK and Ireland. Experian, which earns the bulk of its revenue overseas, said total revenue growth from ongoing activities at actual exchange rates was 4 percent, with pound weakness more than offsetting an improvement in the Brazilian real.
REAL ESTATE
Urban China prices surge
Average new home prices in China’s 70 major cities rose 12.4 percent year-on-year last month, slowing slightly from a 12.6 percent annual increase in November, an official survey showed yesterday. Compared with a month earlier, home prices rose 0.3 percent nationwide, slowing from November’s 0.6 percent, according to Reuters’ calculations from data issued by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing prices rose 23.5 percent, 26.5 percent and 25.9 percent respectively from the same period last year.
DEFENSE
Trump targets F-35 costs
US president-elect Donald Trump has asked Lockheed Martin Corp to reduce costs on the US$379 billion F-35 jet program by at least 10 percent, said Roger Carr, chairman of BAE Systems PLC, which is a key subcontractor on the program. Trump has targeted defense contractors, including Lockheed and Boeing Co, for what he says are excessive expenses on government projects. BAE, Europe’s biggest defense firm, is the main subcontractor on the F-35, making the fuselage, tail and wing parts, and overseeing production of the fuel, ejection and life-support systems and elements of weapons integration. Hewson last week told Trump that Lockheed is close to a deal with the Pentagon to lower costs “significantly” on the next and largest production lot yet of F-35s.
INTERNET
Souq.com suitors flee
Amazon.com Inc and India’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt have walked away from talks to acquire Dubai-based Souq.com after disagreeing over the price, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The e-commerce company is now seeking other potential investors and is negotiating with mall-operator Majid Al Futtaim, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the talks are not public. US online retail giant Amazon last year entered into talks with Souq.com in a deal that would have been worth about US$1 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said in November. The Middle Eastern company’s existing investors include Tiger Global Management and South Africa’s Naspers Ltd.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to